


a better fate than wisdom

by soundthebells (kosy)



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: 5+1 Things, F/M, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Friends to Lovers, Mutual Pining, People Who Like Each Other, Rom-com, Sasha Lives AU, Season One Archives Crew, Set in Pre-Canon, but like don't worry about her dying?, heavy word count but light read i promise, minimal secondhand embarrassment, set in season one, the horror tragedy is still happening and is addressed but this is fluff. we deserve nice things, the sasha living part isn't central, this is still a 5+1 i just split a chapter for readability lol, trope-y, yeah you heard it here first: 5+1 fic in 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-24
Updated: 2020-06-24
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:48:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 53,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23819431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kosy/pseuds/soundthebells
Summary: In their defense, it started as a spite thing. As all good ideas do.Five times Tim and Sasha were in a fake relationship and one time they weren't.
Relationships: Sasha James/Tim Stoker, background Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims - Relationship
Comments: 328
Kudos: 354





	1. since feeling is first

**Author's Note:**

> hey everyone! i needed some shameless joy in my life, so here we are. because apparently i only have two modes: disgusting, trope-y fluff and devastating angst. trust me, no tropes are being cleverly deconstructed/subverted here, just being used for personal enjoyment and hopefully reasonably dealt with enough to for everyone to suspend disbelief. 
> 
> in case you didn't check the tags: **sasha lives in this one.** this isn't a sasha lives fix-it by any means but don't worry about her dying at the end either! 
> 
> oh also minor warning for past childhood bullying in this chapter? it's only discussed, not explicitly shown, and the whole chapter is pretty lighthearted. thanks for reading, hope you enjoy!!

_1\. 17th of November, 2014_

It doesn’t happen frequently. 

And, really, it _shouldn’t_ happen frequently. It’s kind of ridiculous and not really a situation people find themselves in unless they’re actively trying to, which. What’s that saying—once is happenstance, twice is a coincidence, the third time is enemy action? 

Yeah, Tim and Sasha are _well_ past that. 

In their defense, it started as a spite thing. As all good ideas do. 

It wouldn’t have even been necessary if it weren’t for Emily _fucking_ Carlisle showing up out of the woodwork with her boyfriend at that specific sports bar on that specific night. The odds were minimal, and the fact that it happened at all is what Sasha considers to be a sign that the universe has it out for her specifically. 

But the fact remains: Sasha is in a booth alone waiting for Tim to get back from ordering drinks and food. They like to do this, hang out together outside of work. It’s the sort of thing Sasha might overanalyze with any other coworker, but with Tim it felt like a natural progression—like, _obviously_ this absurdly jovial man she works an office job with would become one of the most important people in her life and probably her best friend. Not that she’d never tell him that to his face. In part because it’s kind of pathetic—God, she’s a woman in her mid-thirties; she _should_ have other friends—but in part because the prospect of having to articulate her feelings to someone is frankly abhorrent. 

She’s still ruminating on this when two fingers tap her shoulder and she glances up, expecting to see Tim smiling back at her. 

It is not Tim. 

Instead, it’s her—Hm. What do you call the person who bullied you when you were sixteen, not _outright_ but with constant, viciously passive-aggressive comments in the guise of friendship? It’s that. Emily Carlisle. 

Her whole body goes cold and then hot with latent embarrassment from almost two decades ago. “Oh! Hey, Emily!” The smile she forces onto her face then is physically painful, but Emily returns it with a blinding grin of her own. She looks the same as she always did, minus the butterfly barrette of their teenage years: long, perfectly wavy blonde hair and green-blue eyes and outfit that probably costs more than Sasha’s rent. And, joy of joys, the same boy—well, _man_ now, that’s weird—hanging off her side. Bradley Roberts. 

“Hi!” Emily says brightly. “Long time no see, right? I didn’t know you moved to London!” 

Sasha grits her teeth and hopes it isn’t too obvious. “I didn’t know you had either!” 

Emily makes a show of looking around the crowded, noisy room. “Here all alone?” This is accompanied by a slight pout. Always thrilling to know someone hasn’t changed at all in nearly twenty years. “We should really sit together and catch up! You shouldn’t be by yourself at a bar on a Friday night.” 

Sasha knows it’s stupid. She knows. It’s childish to still be upset at her _adolescent frenemy._ She’s moved on, she’s a professional, she has a life entirely separate from her relatively miserable time in high school. Of course it’s ridiculous to be set off by the false pity in her eyes, the purse of her lips, the raised eyebrow that echoes her own thoughts right back at her: _Someone hasn’t changed at all in nearly twenty years._

And _yet—_

“Actually, no, I’m not here alone!” These are the most verbal exclamation points she’s used in ages. “My boyfriend’s just getting drinks and food for us.” Before she can think better of it, she points in the general direction of where Tim’s leaned up against the bar ordering. 

Though Sasha wouldn’t have thought it possible moments ago, Emily’s eyebrow is somehow climbing further into her hairline. “Oh, really? You got a boyfriend? Congratulations!” 

“Thank you!” She thinks she might genuinely perish if she has to endure any more of this. How the hell did she live through multiple years of it? Nevertheless, she grins at the pair and telegraphs _Please go away_ as hard as she can. 

Either they don’t receive the message or they choose to disregard it entirely, because Emily chirps, “We should hang out together anyway! You can introduce us to the lucky guy.” God. _God._

“Wow, what a fantastic idea! Why don’t you two go order and I’ll wait here?” 

Emily beams and reaches out to touch her shoulder again. “Sounds great! See you in a minute!” 

With that, the two wander off toward the bar. Thankfully, Tim starts heading back her way at that exact moment. Sasha, for her part, does her level best not to panic about the absolute shit she’s landed them both in. 

Tim starts to slide into the booth across from her, but she grabs his arm at the last second and pulls him down to sit next to her, forcing a (slightly manic) smile for the benefit of anybody who might be watching. “Uh. Sasha?” He blinks at her, bewildered. 

“I—oh. Sorry.” She lets go of his sleeve. “Yeah, you know that idea we had about this being a chill night, escape from the coworkers, avoiding our boss’ boss’ boss, et cetera?” They had seen Elias Bouchard, Slimy Bastard Supreme (Tim’s words, not hers), at their usual place a few nights ago, hence the sports bar. Worst choice in the world, apparently. “Not so much, as it turns out.” 

He tips his head. “Are you alright?” 

“Fine!” she says, unconvincingly. She can feel how red her face is, and her breath is coming way too quick, and if it weren’t for _Emily Carlisle—_ “Just. How good at lying are you?” 

“Okay, take a breath first,” he tells her gently. Once she’s done that a few times and is starting to feel a bit calmer, he carries on as if there hadn’t been a pause; thank God for Tim. “And I’m alright? I think? I took an improv class once.” 

“Of course you did,” Sasha mutters, then clears her throat. “Listen, those people I was talking to a few minutes ago, I told them we were dating, so if you could play along, that would be nice. Save whatever’s left of my dignity.” 

“Hang on, why would y—” 

Sasha groans and tips her head back to thud against the wooden back of the booth, squeezing her eyes shut. “Some old high school bullies, passive-aggressive _assholes_ who just wanted to laugh at me for being thirty-five and still single and alone in a bar on a Friday night. So, you know, I told them they were wrong.” She sighs, pressing the heel of her palm into her forehead. Even knowing how Tim is, she’s still expecting him to tell her it was a stupid thing to do. He’d be right, sure, but that wouldn’t make it sting any less. 

“Okay.” 

She cracks an eye open to squint at him. “What?” 

“Okay, I’ll do it.” He’s staring at her with an intense determination that would probably be comedic were it not for the fact that Sasha is equally keyed up. 

“Really? I mean, I can still tell them you’re just a friend—” 

He snorts. “No, you can’t. You’re too deep in. And I don’t want you to. They sound like assholes.” 

“God, thank you, Tim. I owe y—” 

Tim waves her off. “What do I need to know about them?” 

“We went to school together for four years, and Emily was my friend. Or, I mean, it sounds dumb to put ‘friend’ in quotation marks, and frenemy sounds even worse, but it really was like that. She was just cruel to me. Always pointed out all my flaws very publicly while framing it as advice, was always very weird about me being bi, that sort of thing. You know. Nothing really in the grand scheme, I guess, and it could’ve been worse.” 

“Still,” Tim says. “That’s awful.” 

Sasha shrugs, mouth drawing into a thin line. It was all in the past, however much it sucked (or, you know, _had_ been all in the past until about three minutes prior). “His name’s Bradley. Or Brad, because of course his name is Brad. I’m telling you this since, trust me, they’re the kind of people who assume that everyone who’s ever met them will tell their boyfriends about it a few dates in.” 

“Aw, we’re a few dates in?” Tim grins, and Sasha rolls her eyes. 

“Don’t get too excited, Stoker. They’re gonna be all like _oh, you must’ve really enjoyed your twenties if you’re just now getting serious with somebody,”_ she says, adopting a significantly posher accent and dropping it immediately with a grimace. “They got together when they were fifteen. They’re like—okay, you know how you can tell if somebody wasn’t ugly when they were thirteen? I mean, they were just unreasonably nice-looking even at the start of puberty, and they carry that kind of untouchable privilege around forever? They’re that.” Sasha is of the mind that people who never had an awkward phase are distinctly _off._

Tim gives a _hm_ of understanding, tapping his fingers on the table. “Right. Uh, is that them over there?” He gives a mostly-discreet jerk of his head toward—yep, definitely them, the world’s most blandly attractive couple, weaving their way through the tables toward them. 

Sasha nods and then inhales as evenly and deeply as she can, the reality of the situation setting in anew now that Emily’s caught her eye again. “Okay. Okay, yes, this’ll be fine, we’ll just—” 

He shoots her a look and twines their fingers together under the table. “Hey, we’ll be alright.” 

She breathes out sharply and squeezes his hand. “Yeah.” 

Keeping his gaze on them in much the way that one never looks away from an advancing predator, he mutters, “Oh, should’ve asked this earlier—any limits I should know re: fake dating? I mean, anything I should definitely _not_ do.” 

Sasha snorts. “Er—I hadn’t really considered. Don’t slip me tongue, I guess, not that I can imagine any situation where that would be n—” 

“Hi!” Emily exclaims brightly as she sits down across from them. In a truly impressive show of restraint, Sasha keeps herself from wincing. 

“Hello again,” she returns, leaning into Tim and trying not to feel too weird about it. 

Luckily, Tim doesn’t miss a beat, extending a hand toward both of them and smiling warmly. “Nice to meet you!” Brad takes it after a second of hesitation and shakes it; Tim’s megawatt grin doesn’t fade for an instant. “I’m Tim. Tim Stoker.” Brad gives him a head-jerk of acknowledgment but doesn’t bother returning the sentiment. Charming as ever, Bradley Roberts. 

There’s a small, uncertain pause. Tim had come back with their drinks, so she’s at least got her vodka soda to focus on. Emily and Brad aren’t so lucky, seemingly almost uncomfortable with the silence. _Well, that’s what you get for inviting yourself to Friday night drinks after a reign of terror and then twenty years of (extremely welcome) radio silence,_ Sasha thinks smugly. 

“Sooooooo,” Emily finally starts. “How did you two get together?” She gives a simpering little smile. “Love at first sight?” 

“Oh, absolutely,” Tim says. 

“Oh God no,” Sasha says at the exact same time. Tim gives her a Look, but she just rolls her eyes and barrels on; might as well run with it. “We have this fight every time,” she explains to Emily conspiratorially. “He’s just mad because he was enamored with me from the start and I couldn’t _stand_ him.” 

Tim huffs and commits himself to the bit. “You were so _mean_ to me,” he complains. “We took the same required course in uni, and she was obsessed with scoring higher than me.” Hm. She would’ve said something more specific, like psychology or English literature, but the lie’s good enough.

Emily nods sagely. “You always were…” _Bitchy? Difficult to deal with? Overly competitive?_ “Feisty, weren’t you, Sasha?” she finally settles on with a little wrinkle of her nose, and Sasha has to cover up her laughter with a cough. 

“He kept telling me I was reading _Antigone_ wrong,” Sasha says defensively, elbowing him in the side. “Which I absolutely wasn’t, you know how we had to read that for Mrs. Weiderman’s class, Emily, so I was fairly certain I understood the themes from the off. And the, you know, basic plot.” 

Tim gives a mock-offended gasp. “Listen, you can’t _prove_ that Antigone committed suicide. It might’ve been all part of Haemon’s master plan to take the throne—killing Antigone and then Creon, but he failed, so to cover it up, he—” 

“Oh my God,” Sasha groaned, dropping her forehead against his shoulder. “You’re insufferable. And so, so painfully wrong.” Emily and Brad are watching them with polite confusion and maybe 30% comprehension, which is just fine by her. 

“You love me anyway,” Tim beams down at her. 

“Tragically, yes,” she grumbles into his shirt. She feels his hand tighten for a moment in hers, and she squeezes his hand again. Damn, they’re good at this. 

“So, hate at first sight?” Emily tries, clearly grasping at the last thing that was relevant to her interests. “Isn’t that kind of—?” 

“Romantic, if you ask me,” Tim says, still smiling winningly. “See, I had to earn it. Had to properly court her, you know? Once she got past my _correct_ interpretation of _Antigone,_ we actually managed to become pretty good friends. I mean, I had feelings for her the whole time. We fought like cats and dogs at first, but after a few months we went back to her dorm, and, well.” The grin gets toothier then. “You know.” 

_“Tim!”_ She shoves at his shoulder, pushing away from him. However fake the story may be, the flush on her face is _very_ real as of right now. He lets her push him almost horizontal, laughing the whole way, and for a moment she can almost forget she’s being scrutinized by two of the most unpleasant people from her adolescence. Almost. 

“Oh,” Emily contributes, and Tim levers himself upright again, still chuckling, and slings a casual arm over Sasha’s shoulder. At first, she tenses instinctively, but then she leans into the contact after another beat. He’s warm, obviously. Solid too. The thing is, she was intellectually aware that that would be the case, but the reality of it is something else entirely. Looking at somebody and idly noticing _oh, they probably work out_ is very different from feeling the weight of their arm as it curls around you, how their hand rests on your shoulder. _Focus,_ she reminds herself sharply. 

“How’d you two get together?” Tim asks in the lull of conversation, and Emily perks up considerably. 

“Well, _you_ already know the story, Sasha, but…” She does. Emily continues on, and Sasha has no qualms about tuning her out. Blah blah, crushes in math class, sneaking out at night to see each other, steady relationship for the better part of twenty years, blah blah. Oh, huh, that probably makes her Emily Roberts, doesn’t it? She checks, and yep: wedding ring, and there’s no way she didn’t take his name. Whatever. Sasha’s spent enough time mentally snarling _Emily Carlisle_ that calling her anything else feels inherently wrong. 

“Congratulations, by the way,” Sasha says idly, cutting off—well, whatever Emily was saying. Emily blinks at her. “On getting married,” she clarifies. “I don’t think I ever told you. We aren’t friends on Facebook, so I had no idea.” 

Emily’s eyes go comically wide, and her lips turn up. “Oh, thank you so much! It’s been—what, seven years now?” She turns to Brad, who gives a sort of shrug-nod. _Oh, Brad, please tell me you know the anniversary. Even this woman deserves that much._ “Yes, seven years.” She leans forward in her chair and gives a gusty, rapturous sigh that immediately purges away any pity Sasha might have held for her. “So, when are you two lovebirds going to tie the knot?” _Holy shit,_ Sasha notes distantly. _She’s genuinely twirling her hair._

“Oh! I—uh—” Tim stiffens beside her, and Sasha sighs. 

“He’s just self-conscious.” She leans across the table toward Emily until they’re inches apart and whispers, “You know how men are. Can’t admit they have feelings to save their lives.” She gives it a beat. “Thing is, I know where he’s keeping the ring box.” Emily squeals right in her ear, and Sasha would probably flinch away from the noise if it weren’t for the deep satisfaction suffusing through her. 

“Oh, _Sasha,”_ Emily sighs, placing a hand over her heart. Emily was always a lot of things, Sasha reflects dryly, but _subtle_ has never really been one of them. For all her passive aggression. 

“I know,” Sasha says smugly, leaning back into Tim, who resituates himself so he’s holding her again, arms loosely wrapped around her waist. It’s vaguely awkward since she’s just sitting next to him—sorry, there’s no way in _hell_ she’s sitting on his lap in a public restaurant—but Emily audibly sighs again, and Brad… well, Brad keeps staring vacantly at the bar, but that doesn’t mean anything one way or another. 

Sasha gazes at Tim’s profile idly. _Wonder who’d take whose name in_ that _unholy union. No way in hell am I changing my name to Sasha Stoker, and Tim James is just two first names._

Tim gives her a grin that is distinctly, God help her, _flirty._ “Whatcha thinkin’ about?” 

She props her chin on her hand and giggles, as disgustingly saccharine as she can manage without physically gagging, _“You,_ of course.” She watches in satisfaction as he chokes on his beer in a mostly successful attempt to hold back laughter. Emily doesn’t even _blink._

Once their food comes (usual bar fare, but it’s better than the three-day-old lasagne leftovers she currently has in her fridge), dinner is honestly kind of nice. She and Tim disentangle themselves a bit so that they can eat comfortably, and Emily and Brad mostly fall into a silence that could be construed as contemplative. They speak every now and then—apparently Emily is a nurse, and Brad is a mid-level manager at a Sainsbury’s. No kids yet, but Sasha doesn’t press them on that. Emily thinks the fact that they happen to hold the same position at the same institute is _so romantic,_ and Sasha refrains from telling her that it mostly just means a lot of bitching about whoever forgot to clean out the break room’s coffee pot and arguing over who’s actually right about the Mothman. They studiously avoid the topic of politics and try to talk about university, but they all had wildly different experiences considering their current professions, and Sasha and Tim quickly realize the task of melding their own university stories when they didn’t even go to the same school is nigh impossible, so they steer away from that subject too after a few minutes. 

The whole way through, Tim has his leg pressed against hers, a sustained line of contact that somehow keeps managing to snatch her attention away from the conversation. _He’s a natural at this,_ she realizes as she watches him attempt to banter with Brad about the football game playing on the flatscreen over the bar. She’s always known Tim is charismatic and insistently jovial and engaging, like the human version of a goddamn golden retriever, but this goes far beyond that. He’s kind and funny with them, yes, but he’s so _warm_ toward her. Smiling genuinely whenever she speaks, pulling her toward him like he just wants to be close. It’s odd in that it feels both foreign and easy; the act hardly even registers as a departure from the normal until Sasha thinks about it twice. Tim catches her watching him and tilts his head, lips pulling into a lopsided smile that makes her breath catch in her chest. _Oh, no. Not this. Bad idea. Very, very bad idea._

A very, very bad idea she’s now giving actual consideration. Damn. Blame it on the delirium of having to see _Emily Carlisle_ again.

Tim reaches out his arm in silent invitation, which she accepts _(too happily,_ some little voice in her head mumbles), letting herself relax against his side. Her drink’s almost empty, unfortunately. Shame, that. She could use it right about now. 

“Alright?” Tim murmurs into her hair. From the outside, it probably just looks like he’s whispering sweet nothings to her or something. This, she decides, is better. 

“Yeah, ‘m okay,” she whispers, turning her face against his neck so he can hear her. “You?” She can feel his pulse against her forehead, fast and loud. Nothing like a good performance to get your heart rate up. He probably always wanted to be a theatre kid, deep down. 

“All good here.” His lips press briefly against her hairline, just a soft touch, and she exhales out a shaky breath and pulls back. She’s not going to look at him, she’s _not,_ and she’s not going to blush about it either. For the record, Sasha did _have a good time_ during her twenties, if that’s how you wanted to put it. Sure, she spent plenty of time in school, subsequently working her way up in the world of academia, building a respectable career, and securing herself a good job at the Magnus Institute, but she wasn’t a nun. She probably would’ve lost it if she hadn’t gone clubbing with friends and taken people home (if she so chose) a couple of times. Several times. By this point, she figures she should have settled into it, being an adult. Doing romance. Certainly not blushing when her friend/coworker ambiguously kisses her on the forehead. But here she is anyway, as much as she would prefer otherwise.

Pushing all that to the side momentarily to stew about later, Sasha gives Emily the best cheery smile she can manage and says, “Well, it’s been a lovely time, but we should probably start heading out.” 

Emily looks genuinely sad at the prospect. “Oh! Time does fly.” 

“Mm,” Sasha says, having been painfully aware of the passing of every second for the last hour and a half. “Really does!” 

Tim makes a show of checking his watch. “Wow! Sure is late!” It’s 8:03 PM, but Sasha graciously does not point that out. 

“But it’s only 8 o’clock!” Emily is not so gracious, apparently. 

Tim grimaces apologetically, already scooting out of the booth. “Yeah, but we have a place to be in the morning, we’re _really—”_

“Busy. Also, we just have to get home, we have to feed our—” 

“Cat!” Tim finishes triumphantly. “Her name’s A—Lo—EEeaaeeiieeeEllie, she’s a real sweetheart.”

Sasha fights the urge to roll her eyes yet again. “Can’t even remember our own cat’s name,” she grumbles, following Tim out of the booth and taking his hand nonetheless for appearances’ sake. 

Brad chimes in, “It’s okay, man, I can’t remember Emily’s cat’s name either,” and Tim looks genuinely pained. Sasha shoots a sympathetic glance at Emily, sees she’s gone stiff, and then just feels even worse. 

“Yikes,” Tim mumbles, just loud enough so Sasha can hear it, and she makes a soft noise of agreement. Raising his voice more, he says, “Thanks for eating with us!” 

Emily rallies enough to smile at them again. “Of course! It was so nice catching up.” She starts to stand as if to walk toward them and, oh no, if Sasha has to take this woman’s contact information she’ll— 

“Okay great see ya! We’re gonna go, uh, have sex!” Tim says, definitely too loudly for the confined space they’re in, but Sasha doesn’t even care because they’re finally, _finally_ rushing for the door out into the cold night air, and Tim is clutching her hand and laughing a bit hysterically as he pulls her into a nearby alley, stumbling to a stop and leaning against the brick wall. The light from the streetlamps don’t reach fully into the little side road, but she can still see the outline of his face, still working his way down from weird little giggles that make her laugh too in spite of herself. 

“That’s what you came up with, Mr. I-Took-An-Improv-Class? ‘We’re gonna go, uh, have sex’?” she gasps out. 

Tim wheezes, “Well, I _did_ say it was only once,” and collapses back against the wall, still grinning. “And all things considered, I think we did pretty good!” 

“I _guess,”_ she concedes, and she can’t keep the laugh out of her voice. 

“See, it’s ‘cause we’re such an iconic duo, there’s no way they could’ve seen through us! Bonnie and Clyde. Abbott and Costello. Mulder and Scully. Tim and Sasha. Right up there with the greats!” 

She snorts. “Whatever you wanna tell yourself, Tim.” 

“Hmph. You’re just mad because _you_ never took an improv class.” 

“Are you kidding? Plus, I was way quicker than you, improv class or no. _Required university course?_ That doesn’t mean anything!” 

Tim gasps dramatically. “I’ll have you know I left the subject open-ended so _you_ could elaborate on it. I knew you’d make the story so much richer than I could ever dream to.” 

“Okay, but please tell me you don’t actually think Haemon was plotting to take the throne, which led him to kill Antigone. It literally just doesn’t make sense. Also, of course she committed suicide! Antigone’s agency and passion is the only thing that makes that play interesting; without that it’s just another dusty old Greek tragedy.” 

Tim’s eyes brighten and he straightens up slightly. “Ooh, did you know that the word tragedy actually comes from the Greek for goat song? Really! Tragos means goats, aoid means song—so goat song!” 

Sasha thinks she might actually die from fondness, so she squints at him and says, “You’re dodging the question, Stoker.” 

“Seriously, no acknowledgment for the goat song thing?” He pushes off the wall, turning that grin on her full force. She’d almost find it funny how quickly she 180’d from no feelings for this man to, apparently, _many_ feelings for this man, except that it was happening to her and it was very inconvenient, considering. Considering all of it, honestly. They’re coworkers, yeah, and sleeping with him would probably screw things up for her in some way, make her seem unprofessional or whatever, but more importantly they’re friends. And that’s— 

“Fine,” Sasha heaves a sigh. “The goat song thing is... pretty good.” 

Tim leans back, satisfied. _“Thank_ you. See, that’s all I wanted to hear!” _Bad idea, extremely bad idea._

“Well, now you’ve got to tell me what I want to hear.” 

He huffs out a small breath of a laugh. “You know that I don’t disagree with you. The whole _point_ of _Antigone_ is, y’know—Antigone. Not Haemon. Otherwise he'd be in the title.” 

“Absolute genius, you are,” Sasha mutters, placated. Tim grins back at her, sweet and wide and genuine, so it’s really not on her for taking a step forward. She’s spent the whole evening in his space; hell, there was a stretch of time she was practically on top of him. This, however, is intentional, her moving closer so that they’re nearly chest-to-chest, and she can see the recognition of that reflected back in his gaze. It registers somewhere that she’s almost as tall as he is. She can actually look into his eyes. His expression has gone still, more solemn than she’s ever seen it in her months of knowing him, but it doesn’t feel like a rejection. It’s just _heavy,_ laden with a weight she hadn’t really thought him capable of. Not unnaturally so. Just enough for her to sense its gravity. 

He starts quietly, “Sasha—” 

She cuts him off. “Do you want to—? Because—because tell me if you don’t, but.” She can’t think of anything to say after that, so she just looks at him.

All the air rushes out of him. “I—of course I do. I just don’t want to mess up what we have.” 

“Me neither,” she says and means it. But she’s looking at him, face dimly lit in the orange and gold glow of the far-off streetlamp, and she’s thinking about easy laughter and dark eyes and hair swept back from a smiling face, about neck, shoulders, arms, and hands, and it’s suddenly very hard for anything to feel like much of an obstacle at all. “So we won’t.” 

“Okay.” He laughs, just a little shakily. “Easy.” 

“Easy,” she affirms, and she kisses him. 

Thus begins the most ill-advised hookup of Sasha’s entire life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and then they did mess up what they had! tragic. figured i'd get That bit out of the way first; it's full pining from here on out folks. thank you for reading! updates will hopefully come pretty quickly after this, like every few days at most. the title and chapter titles are stolen from an e.e. cummings poem called "since feeling is first", because it fits timsasha... surprisingly well? you can find me on tumblr [@boneroutes](https://boneroutes.tumblr.com), where i've committed myself to dragging everyone down with me re: this pairing. thanks again for reading, and leave a comment/kudos if you feel inclined! :)
> 
> edit: OH YEAH BTW THE ANTIGONE THEORY ABOUT HAEMON? THE ONE THAT GOES AGAINST ALL THEMES OF THE PLAY? A REAL GENUINE HOMEGROWN THEORY OF ONE OF MY CLASSMATES. legend


	2. any attention to the syntax of things

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the aftermath of their one night stand, things go back to normal. Ish.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey everyone! last bar-centric chapter, i promise we're on to bigger and better things after this one. really minor cw for vaguely shitty dude at a bar. but again—lighthearted fic, we're here to have a good time. so i hope you all enjoy!

_2\. 28th of April, 2015_

After work on Thursday nights, the researching team goes to the pub. Only the ones Tim has deemed _cool,_ obviously, and only those who aren’t deeply burnt out from being around the same fifteen other people for the previous nine hours, so their nights out have a rotating cast by necessity. They usually go to Ernie’s, which is a moderately run-down hole in the wall that clashes with the nicer buildings of Chelsea. That suits them just fine. Academia pays well enough for them to hold down flats in the vicinity of central London, but it certainly doesn’t leave enough left over for them to be throwing money around for the hell of it. The Thursday night thing is because it’s less crowded then, even though it means they can’t drink as much.

It used to be a tradition for just him and Sasha, plus Jon, once Tim met him on a joint research project and resolved to become his friend, if only for the sake of the challenge. But then Isaak sort of got roped in when he was going through a breakup and needed all the support he could get, and Aaron started tagging along because he was new and trying to make friends, and pretty soon it was a whole gaggle of researchers all meandering around Ernie’s with (only slightly overpriced) IPAs. 

This is how Tim finds himself crammed into a booth alone with Jonathan Sims, who’s _finally_ tipsy enough to ramble unselfconsciously to him about the latest documentary he watched (in this case, something about the cultural role of bread through the millennia. It’s surprisingly interesting). It’s nice to see the guy actually loosen up for once in his life; whenever they go out drinking, Tim tries to engage him in some kind of conversation about whatever he’s interested in at the moment just because of the way his eyes light up and his hands dance in the air and the tension drains out of his muscles. Besides, Tim likes him. Just in general. He’s genuinely knowledgeable and good to talk to once you get him to shed the prickly, distant exterior (or, more accurately, listen to, if he gets into one of Those Topics). Which is one of many skills Tim considers himself expert at. 

Unfortunately, his regularly scheduled Enjoy Jon Being Chill time is interrupted by Sasha catching his attention and frantically widening her eyes at him. It’s not a subtle signal, but it works well enough. She’s perched up at the bar, nursing something probably significantly higher proof than he has the stomach for, and in the stool next to her is an extremely average looking man who looks like he’s bombing very, very hard but also refusing to cut his losses and give up. Always a nasty combination. Sometimes she likes to drink alone, especially after an unusually taxing week like this one, and usually people at Ernie’s are chill enough to respect that, but some people either don’t receive the message or are just unwilling to. 

Sasha grimaces pleadingly at Tim while the guy is looking away, so he heaves an exaggeratedly put-upon sigh and gets to his feet. 

Jon stops mid-ramble. “Where are you going?” 

“Uh—” He glances between the two of them. Jon’s looking at him with an abandoned-dog sort of confusion while Sasha’s already turned back to the guy, who’s now leaning closer to her with a sloppily drunken grin on his face, and yeah, nope, he does _not_ want that to keep happening. “It’s a—thing. I’ll explain in a sec, just gotta…” and he starts speedwalking toward the bar. In a chill, casual way. 

Sasha tilts back out of Weird Rando’s space and flashes Tim a smile and an arched eyebrow (good casual girlfriend-happy-to-see-her-boyfriend vibes, plus a note of out-of-character _where the hell have you been?_ ). “Hey babe!” Heavy emphasis on the _babe._ Weird Rando twitches a little like he’s been shocked, and Tim throws him a too-wide grin, slinging a pointedly casual arm around Sasha’s shoulders. 

“Hey.” He softens the smile when he looks down at her, really plays up the _I-have-eyes-only-for-you_ tenderness he’s sure has her scoffing internally. “How’re you doin’?” 

She flutters her eyelashes up at him, and he finds himself barely holding back a snort too. “I’m alright. Just talking to—” 

“Jake,” the guy mutters, eyeing him balefully. Tim beams at him, arm tightening around Sasha (who squirms a little in his grasp to press a kiss against his cheek—way too belated to be a _hello_ kiss, very much an _I’m-dating-this-person_ kiss, nice), and Jake’s expression turns even sourer. 

“Yeah!” Sasha smiles sharply, and the conversation screeches to a dead halt there. Tim keeps staring Jake down until he finally shifts under his gaze and mumbles something about _work tomorrow, gotta go._ As he shoves past Tim on the way out the door, he snarls something under his breath that Tim can’t totally catch, but he hears more than enough. He’s genuinely about to follow Jake out and—he doesn’t even know what. Yell at him? Punch him? Something, definitely. He can physically feel the anger, tight and hot in his stomach, and he’s starting for the exit too when Sasha catches him by the arm and holds him in place. 

“It’s fine,” she says. “Really, I don’t mind. I just wanted him to go away.” 

Tim shakes his head, hand clenching unconsciously where it’s still resting on her shoulder. “He—Sasha, he called you a bitch. That’s not—” 

“It’s _fine,”_ she repeats, voice tight. “He was just a boring guy at a bar who got nasty when it became evident I wasn’t interested. It happens.” 

“It shouldn’t.” 

“Yeah, well.” Sasha tips herself against his side for a moment, head coming to rest briefly on his collarbone. “It did. Thank you, by the way.” 

Tim sighs and wraps his other arm around her. “Anytime. Obviously.” He drops his forehead down to her hair and just breathes for a moment. 

They stay there together for a long moment, hugging silently in a room full of people, until she cranes her neck back to look him in the eye, smirking. “Awfully eager, aren’t you?” 

He huffs and pulls back in mock offense, holding back a laugh. “You’ve killed the moment! And here I thought we were bonding—” 

“We _are_ bonding,” Sasha says. “This is bonding!” 

“Scaring off weirdos in pubs is bonding?” 

Sasha raises a conspiratorial eyebrow. “Well, maybe not for most people. But we’re _special.”_ She grins at him, bright and real despite the general shittiness of the previous several minutes, and—

Tim doesn’t consider himself a romantic, that’s the thing. Okay, he _does,_ but in an “extremely skilled in the art of romancing” way as opposed to a “sigh helplessly about how their hair looks in the sunshine, write sonnets about the curve of his lips, spend a full day thinking about the moment her hands brushed yours as she handed you a ballpoint pen” way. He likes to leave the hopeless pining to other people and either _do_ something about it or get over it. Not a particularly poetic man, Timothy Stoker, and he’s happy that way. Except, God help him, she’s backlit by the dull gold lights of the bar and she’s smiling at him like she actually means it and her eyes are dark and her freckled cheeks are alcohol-flushed and her dimples are showing, and he feels like if this goes on any longer he’s going to take a page out of Martin-from-Research’s book and start writing shitty free verse poetry, and then he’ll _really_ be done for. 

He clears his throat. “We sure are!” _Good recovery._

“Mm. Listen, I’m going to go fix my makeup. You can go back to the booth with Jon, I’ll be back out in a sec.” She’s stopped looking at him now, instead fiddling with the button on his rolled-up shirtsleeve. 

Tim goes back and forth with himself for a moment before deciding to just ask. “Are you sure you’re okay? We can head out early, I’ll get you an Uber if you like—” 

She looks at him sharply, and he tries to ignore the slight hunch of her shoulders. “I’m fine. Like I said. I’ll be back out in a sec.” 

Admirably, he resists the urge to double/triple-check (he’s not entirely sure, which is probably a good sign that he should stop asking) that she’s alright. “Okay. Yeah, I’ll be with Jon. See you in a few?” 

“Yeah.” She gives him one last squeeze on the forearm before disentangling herself and heading toward the ladies’ room. Tim just barely _(barely)_ manages to keep himself from sighing wistfully as he trudges his way back to the booth, where Jon’s outright staring at him. 

He flops back down into the seat across from him and arches an eyebrow. “What?” 

Jon flushes and stammers out, “Oh! N-nothing, I was just—” 

Tim sighs. “Just ask, Jon.” 

“...Fine. What was all _that_ about?” 

Shrug. “It’s just a thing we do sometimes. Turns out the easiest way to get people to fuck off in clubs or whatever is to pretend you’ve got a date, so. We do that. They tend to get the message. Sometimes I help her, sometimes she helps me. It’s not a big deal, just…” 

Jon just looks at him, bemused. “Is this a… common occurrence for the two of you? I mean, how often can you _possibly_ need to—”

He snorts. “You’d be surprised.” 

“Huh. Really?” 

It’s more statement than question the way he says it, but Tim answers anyway. “Yeah. I mean, you know, we didn’t do it for a while after…” He makes a vague gesture in the air, and Jon tracks the hand movement, brows furrowing minutely in consternation. “But then a few months back, I couldn’t get a guy to leave me alone when we went out for drinks, so she just kind of—swooped in, I guess. I was thankful for it, trust me.” 

“Huh,” Jon repeats, thankfully not asking Tim to elaborate on the “after…” part. “I just—I guess I don’t really understand how this happens frequently enough for it to become routine?” 

“Yeah, you and me both, boss,” Tim mutters. “I guess that’s just how it goes sometimes.” 

Jon’s opening his mouth to reply when Sasha flings herself down next to Tim and asks, “Right, who’s buying the next round?”

Jon fidgets a bit in his seat. “I was actually thinking about heading out soon. It’s a little late, and I have a meeting with Elias tomorrow morning that I don’t want to be all… out of sorts for.” 

“Ooh, meeting with the big boss. What’s happening there?” Sasha grins, leaning forward a bit. 

“I, hah. I don’t know. The email he sent me was, ah. Quite long and entirely devoid of substance other than the time of the appointment. I believe I’m to assume that his office is the location, though that wasn’t specified,” he says dryly. 

“Sounds about right,” Tim mutters. God, he hates Elias. The man struck him as capital-c Creepy from day one, and nothing he’s done since has ever disproved that first impression. 

Jon shrugs, draining the remaining contents of his glass. “Suppose I’ll just have to see.” He pauses. “Though he did… allude to the head archivist position.” 

Tim very carefully avoids looking at Sasha. “Did he?” 

“Yes.” He glances between the two of them. “What, do you honestly think I’m getting called up to Elias’ tomorrow for a promotion? I’ve only been working here a few years.” 

Tim forces a casual smile and shrug. “Well, who knows, right?” _It really_ isn’t _certain,_ he reminds himself. _Could just be more typical cryptic Bouchard Bullshit._ He hopes so. He really, truly hopes that’s what it is, because if it’s not, then what was the _point_ of—

“You know, I might go home early as well,” Sasha says, tone far too bright. 

“Oh, c’mon, Sasha,” Tim complains with forced levity, a heavy feeling settling somewhere in his stomach. “It’s only half nine. We can stay a little longer even if Jon wants to head out.” He can feel how she’s tensed up with the way their sides are pressed together in the cramped booth, and more than anything, he wishes he was allowed to wrap his arm around her or take her hand. But that ship has sailed and, as she is quick to remind him, sunk. 

She shoots him a look, worrying at her lower lip, but anything she might’ve said is interrupted by Jon clearing his throat and saying, “Uh, bye, I suppose,” before shuffling out of the pub. 

“See you!” Tim calls after him, then turns to Sasha. “Seriously, Sasha, it might not mean anything. It might just—” 

“It’s fine,” she cuts him off wearily. “So he gets the job and I don’t. It’s not like I _expected_ t—” 

“Yes, you did. And, honestly, for good reason—you’ve been working here way longer, and you at least have _some_ experience with library science regardless of whether you’ve got a degree in it. I mean, I love the guy, but you’re just more qualified. It’s not fair.” 

In lieu of a reply, Sasha drops her forehead against the table. “Ugh. You know, I _really_ thought this was going to be a nice night.” 

He shrugs; he knows deflection when he hears it. “Still could be.” 

She turns her head so that her cheek rests against the table, grimacing at the slight stickiness of the dark wood, and squints up at him. “Are you trying to proposition me, Timothy?”

“What? No, I—I didn’t mean it like _that!”_ he exclaims, and she snorts, finally lifting her head. “And, by the way, if I _was_ trying to proposition you, you’d know it. Trust me. The old Stoker charm would have you swooning before you knew what hit you!” 

“Mm. Sounds intimidating.” 

“Hey, I’ll have you know I am a consummate _virtuoso_ in the ways of romance,” Tim says indignantly. “I thought you of all people would be aware of this by now.” 

“A few fake dates and one hookup does not a romance make, Tim,” she grins, crossing her arms over her chest. 

He splays a hand over his heart and gasps. “You _wound_ me, Sasha. Here I thought we had something special.” 

“Ha. Keep dreaming,” she smirks, shaking her head. It’s—Tim’s glad they’re both at a place where they’re comfortable enough to joke about it. Really, he is. The couple of weeks after they’d slept together had been awkward and just _terrible,_ full of tense silence in their corner of the Research bullpen and jokes left without punchlines and weird empty spaces in his evenings where she would usually be, going out to grab something to eat after work or talking about nothing on his sofa or getting drinks together. Even after he’d finally managed to get through a single conversation with her and set them back on the path toward normal, it had been another few weeks until they were at a place where they could honestly call each other _friends_ again. Now, months later, they were even better than they had been before; the dread and surprisingly sharp sorrow he’d felt waking up in bed alone the morning after feels almost more like a bad dream than anything else. 

Still. Having her shoot him down even as a joke aches more than it probably should. 

God, he should have gotten over her months ago. He never should’ve felt this way at all, really, but—

“You know me. Always do,” he says. “Listen, it’s alright if you want to head home for the night and just be alone. But really, I don’t think that a little company would kill you.” She grimaces, and he raises an eyebrow. _Please, for fuck’s sake, just let someone take care of you for once. We don’t even have to talk about it._

“We’ve got work in the morning,” she protests weakly. 

“Oh no,” he deadpans. “God forbid we inconvenience our fearless leader Elias Bouchard by being late, hungover, or otherwise unproductive tomorrow.” 

“Hm, fair point.” After a beat of consideration, she sighs dramatically, sprawling against the backrest. “Fine, if you insist—take me home, Stoker.” His bastard traitor heart flutters at that. Fucking _flutters._ He’d laugh if it wasn’t him. 

Regardless of inconvenient emotions over friends who have rather explicitly rejected him, Tim sets about the task of nudging Sasha out of the booth. “Right, then, up you get!” 

“Ugh,” she mumbles, but goes willingly. She’s a bit hesitant to stand up and wobbles slightly when she does, and Tim can see how she furrows her brow and steadies herself a little before taking a step forward. Sasha can hold her liquor better than most people he’s had the pleasure of drinking with, but he’s got the feeling that she might’ve overestimated her own capacity tonight. “‘M sorry,” she tells him, like she’s heard his thoughts. “Just drank a little much talking to Jake. Wanted something to do with my hands.” 

“Don’t worry about it,” Tim reassures her, getting to his feet and gently taking hold of her elbow. She wrinkles her nose at the gesture but leans into him regardless, and he has to fight the urge to laugh. Woe betide anybody who tries to coax even the smallest shred of vulnerability out of this woman. 

As if to offset having to rely on him to steady herself, she pulls out her phone with clumsy fingers and starts tapping away determinedly. “I’ll get the Uber.” He rolls his eyes but relents without argument. 

They wait outside together, leaned against the wall of Ernie’s. It’s a Thursday night so the nightlife is more subdued than usual, but there’s still that quiet comfort to watching the straggling groups of people passing by, that feeling of being removed from the masses yet inexplicably part of something larger than yourself. Here in the shadows, Sasha’s more openly relaxed against him. Like the darkness gives her plausible deniability. He won’t call her on it, though. Obviously. He’d be mad to do that. Tim’s not sure if he should be guilty for it or not. He thinks probably. But it’s—it’s _nice,_ that’s all, the slight weight of her propped against his side, pressed snugly together from leg to shoulder. Her head has tipped sideways to rest gently against his shoulder, her hair curling against his neck and chin where it’s fallen loose from her no-nonsense high ponytail. When he dares to glance down at her, her eyes are fixed on the street, watching the cars go by, but she’s shrugged free of the hand he’d laid on her elbow in favor of wrapping her arm around his waist, and he can feel the warm puff of her breath against his neck.

It almost feels cruel, honestly. Knowing that whenever she does this, it has to be at least in part with a hint of irony, a callback of sorts to all the times they’ve conned people with a couple of well-placed touches and damn good improv. There’s always that sardonic twist to the way she smiles at him whenever they play this game, like _how ridiculous, right?_

He _gets_ it. Honestly, he does. He knows why they can’t be together. This is the kind of thing that ruins your career if you’re a woman. Sure, they probably couldn’t fire her for it outright; she’s too good of a researcher for that and it’s technically not against any rules. But it would mess up her professional reputation and _definitely_ her chances at a promotion. If she were to be promoted, they’d be in different departments, at least theoretically, except that she’d told him once (while extremely tired and more than a little inebriated, naturally) that she loved working with him, couldn’t imagine doing otherwise. Honestly, it’s in the running for the nicest thing she’s ever said to him, which he thinks says more about her than it does about him. It definitely poses an issue for them nonetheless; if she became his manager, then she’d _absolutely_ be off-limits, way beyond the regular awkwardness of an office relationship. 

Besides, if they fucked it up—well, they’d promised each other they wouldn’t let that happen, and then proceeded to fuck it up quite impressively for the following several weeks. And, ultimately, he’d much rather be her friend than her ex. He’d gotten a taste of the latter and hadn’t cared for that shit at _all._

So, yes, Tim gets it. It’ll never happen. In the intervening months, Sasha’s gone through a partner or two that she’s told him about, albeit nothing too serious; Tim’s done the same. He can respect a no, and they’re moving on, or at least _she’s_ moving on. Tim’s… trying his best. He _loves_ people. Loving people is his baseline. 

It’s just that he keeps coming back to her. 

A Ford Fiesta pulls up to the side of the road in front of them. “Uber’s here,” Sasha says unnecessarily, double-checking the license plate before opening the door and climbing inside. He follows. The twenty-minute ride to her flat is, mercifully, spent mostly in silence beyond the necessary confirmation of the destination with the driver, a middle-aged bald guy who introduces himself as Leonard. Normally he’d try to engage with him, but tonight, Tim just stares out the window and watches the streetlamps blur past. Tries to ignore how Sasha’s forgone the other window seat in favor of curling against his side. It’s not particularly cold out, either—it’s a balmy April evening, but here she is nonetheless, relaxed into him like she’s seeking out his warmth. It’s because she’s drunk. Or because she’s tired. Or because she’s had a rough day. Literally any reason other than the reason he wants because if he dwells on _that_ any longer, he’s well and truly going to cock this up. 

Once they arrive and pay the driver, it’s just the task of helping Sasha up the stairs to her flat. She’s a little less wobbly on her feet, but she’s still got that focused furrow in her brow with every step she takes, like she’s concentrating very hard on not stumbling. It’s absurdly cute, though he doubts she’d much appreciate him telling her so. At any rate, it’s not too difficult except for her determination to walk on her own— _I’m not_ geriatric, _Tim, God, you don’t have to hold onto my elbow like I’m a granny you’re helping across the street—_ and it’s not long before they’re on the top floor of the complex. She fumbles a bit for her key before letting them both inside, collapsing dramatically onto her living room sofa as soon as she’s shut and locked the door behind them. 

“I’ll get you a glass of water,” he calls over his shoulder, heading into the kitchen. 

Muffled into the arm of the couch: “It isn’t that bad. I really didn’t have too much—” 

“—But I’m willing to bet you were drinking on an empty stomach and you definitely weren’t drinking water as you went. I’m sure you’ll bounce back fine enough tomorrow morning, but you aren’t twenty-two anymore, Sasha,” Tim finishes as he returns to the living room with the glass of water, grinning. “And yeah, yeah, _I’m not drunk, just a little tipsy,_ and _I can hold my alcohol better than you can any day, prettyboy,_ blah blah blah. I know the routine, Sash, just drink your water.” Predictably, she rolls her eyes at that. She doesn’t debate him on the point, though, gratifyingly enough. He hands her the glass and flops down on the sofa next to her. They don’t talk much then either, just listen to the synthy pop blaring from the next flat over. 

Sasha finishes the water and sets it on the carpeted floor before resting back against the arm of the couch and shutting her eyes. “Thanks,” she says, so soft he barely even hears it. 

“Seriously, it’s no problem,” Tim says, just as quietly. This, he assumes, will just be another one of those things they mutually and silently agree not to talk about. He’s learning to live with that. 

“Just tell me if you don’t want to, alright?” 

“Don’t want to what?” 

“I don’t—help me, I guess. Take care of me. Pretend to date me to chase off weirdos. You don’t have to. People like you, they just keep doing things because they think it’ll make people happy—” 

“Sasha. I’m here because I want to be here. I know you’d do the same for me. Okay?” 

She sighs. “Okay.” 

There’s a brief pause, so he gives her ankle a comforting pat because it’s the nearest part of her to him. It is both awkward and a bit unintentionally condescending. She opens her eyes to glare and then kick at him halfheartedly, and he relents and pulls his hand away with a quiet huff of a laugh. All is well. 

“I’ll take the couch.” 

“Tim, what was I _just_ saying?” 

“Well, I’m not taking the _bed._ It’s your flat.” 

She snorts. “Fair enough. I’ve got a spare toothbrush around here somewhere that I’ll grab for you. Are you sure you want to stay the night?” 

“I mean, I’m already here, aren’t I?” 

“Yeah, guess you are.” 

Another pause. Her eyes slide closed again, and she slumps down into the cushions. 

Tim regards her with amusement. “Am I going to have to carry you to your bedroom?” 

“Don’t you _dare,_ Timothy Stoker." 

“I mean, it went well enough last time,” he mumbles. “In fact, I think I recall you enjoying it quite a bit—” 

She aims another blind kick at his shoulder that he just barely dodges at the last second. “Oh, shut _up,_ Tim.” 

“You wouldn’t want that if you got it!” he says indignantly.

Sasha tips her head, opening her eyes to look at him with an expression that almost knocks him reeling. He doesn’t know what it even is or what to make of it, but—

“No, I wouldn’t.” 

It’s not nothing. 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading! sorry for the slight delay on this chapter—it fought me kicking and screaming for some reason. the next chapter will hopefully be up in the next few days, though i can't really make any guarantees; school's been heavy lately. fear not, though! this fic's fully outlined, i know where it's going, and i really can't see my endless love for timsasha dying anytime soon. thanks again! comments and kudos are, as always, appreciated, and wonderful fuel.


	3. will never wholly kiss you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tim and Sasha do some statement followup.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> back and better than ever, this time with another tim pov! and as promised, we're leaving the realm of "shitty people at bars". enjoy the update :D

_3\. 2nd of March, 2016_

The bookshop, when they finally find it amid the tangled mess of streets and alleyways that make up Central London, is frankly unimpressive. 

It feels like a mean thought to have—it’s clearly family-run and has a comforting sort of homeyness, hand-painted sign and all—but it’s rundown and dusty-looking from the outside, and Tim doubts the interior will be much better. Admittedly, it _does_ look appropriately old, but in a decades-of-dodgy-health-inspection-results way rather than a mystic way. 

Next to him, Sasha’s paused to regard the place with doubt too. “And we’re sure this is the place?” 

It is, but Tim double-checks the slip of paper Jon had handed him on their way out the door anyway. The address matches. “Yep.” 

“Mm. Not exactly the sort of place you’d expect to be housing an eldritch tome, is it?” 

“Well, expect the unexpected, I suppose,” he says, re-folding the paper and stuffing it back into the pocket of his jeans. 

“I guess so, given the subject.” Sasha loiters at the entrance to the shop for a moment before shaking her head, pushing the door open, and striding inside decisively. She makes a beeline for the far left side of the store, opposite from the register, without so much as acknowledging the little “hello!” from the guy behind the counter. Tim gives him a slightly apologetic wave as he follows her, which the guy returns. He finds her glaring at the shelves, all horribly disorganized and overflowing with ancient-looking books. 

“Almost as bad as the damn archives,” she mutters, scanning the stacks of books. “There’s really no end to this mess, is there?” 

“Probably karma for the crimes you committed in a past life,” he suggests. “You bludgeoned a librarian to death with a hardback copy of _War and Peace_ and it haunts you to this day.” 

She wrinkles her nose. “If past-life-Sasha was a murderer, I hope she at least picked a better book.”  
  
“Hey, what do you have against Tolstoy?” 

Sasha gives him a nasty look. “You’d feel the same if you’d had to read all of _War and Peace_ when you were seventeen.” 

“You had to read _all_ of it? At _seventeen?_ What kind of sadist made you do that?” 

She groans. “Mrs. Weiderman.” 

“The Mrs. Weiderman who taught you the wrong version of _Antigone_?” 

“I’m not even going to reply to the _Antigone_ part; we are _not_ having that argument again. But yes, the very same.” She runs her fingers over the spines of a couple books, still glowering at them. “In her defense, it wasn’t really her fault.” 

Tim leans against one of the shelves. “How do you mean?” 

She hesitates, then reluctantly says, “I actually chose to?”

That startles a laugh out of him. “You read the entirety of _War and Peace_ on _purpose?”_

“Yeah, I—alright, I know, shut up. Listen, in my defense, we had to pick a classic to read on our own for the first semester on top of our other class assignments, and when Weiderman was presenting us the list of choices, she got to _War and Peace_ and she said something like ‘this one’s technically an option, but nobody has ever chosen it because it’s horribly long and dull. It’s important literature, but when I read the book the first time I couldn’t stand it. I had to go through the whole thing twice before I could really enjoy it. And I doubt any of _you_ lot could appreciate it anyway,’ so—” 

“So you took it as a challenge,” he laughs. “Of _course_ you did. And?” 

“And what?” 

“Well, how was it?”

“She was right,” Sasha grumbles, throwing him a baleful look. “Absolutely awful. I understand _why_ it has literary merit, don’t get me wrong; I just despised the thing. Pretended to like it, though. Just to prove her wrong.” How quintessentially Sasha of her. But however much he’s amused by it, he’s just as hopelessly endeared. 

“Did she buy it?” 

She snorts. “‘Course she did. I’ll have you know I was a stellar student. Pleasure to have in class.” 

“Sure.” 

“I _was!”_ she gasps. “Don’t take that tone with me, Timothy Stoker. You know, I bet you ate bugs in biology labs to impress the girls.” 

“...maybe so. Listen, being twelve’s a rough time for everyone. And you know what? I learned and grew from that experience,” he says primly, crossing his arms. 

She finally turns away from the bookshelf, raising her eyebrows. “And what’d you learn?” 

“That eating bugs as a twelve-year-old boy only impresses _other_ twelve-year-old boys,” Tim grins. “Not that I was complaining, but—y’know. Different kind of attention than I wanted.” 

Sasha laughs. “Just eating bugs as _specifically_ a twelve-year-old boy doesn’t work? What, d’you think the effectiveness of bug-eating as a courting method would change now that you’re in your mid-thirties?” 

“Well, I haven’t tried it since I was twelve. Though I could be convinced to try again. For a good cause.” He smiles winningly at her. 

“No such thing, in this case,” she replies flatly and goes back to hunting for the book. Tim watches. He’d say he’s lost in thought, but he’s really just—looking. God, okay, _no,_ that sounds creepy, it’s just that sometimes it’s hard not to get caught up when Sasha gets like this, all intense and focused in, even if it’s only because she’s hunting through disorganized bookshelves for some kind of spooky body horror how-to manual. She gets this intent expression, dark eyes keen and narrowed, furrow forming between her brows, mouth in a tight line. It’s not anything special, objectively, but it’s _her._

She cranes her neck around to scrutinize him after a couple moments of silence, and he jolts himself out of his reverie, instinctively avoiding her gaze. “Are you going to help out, or…?” 

“Yes, ma’am!” Tim mock-salutes and saunters over to her side. “What are we looking for again?” He knows, obviously. He’s not an idiot. He pays _some_ attention when Jon speaks. But, well. She’s cute when she’s pretending to be annoyed at him. 

She heaves a sigh at him in what he’s 90% sure is fond exasperation, turning away from the books to lean against the shelving, face to face with him. “Honestly, Tim. It’s like working with a toddler.” 

“But, like, a _cool_ toddler, right?”

“Whatever helps you sleep at night. And it’s _The Boneturner’s Tale._ If the statement’s to be believed, which, let’s be honest, it probably isn’t, then it’s like something out of _The Canterbury Tales._ If Chaucer was way into gore and extremely detailed body horror, I guess.” She makes a disgusted face. “According to the case file, it’s a mostly unmarked black paperback, except for the title on the front cover in white serif font. Oh, plus the Leitner bookplate too—” 

“Oooh, didn’t know it was part of the LLCU (Leitner Library Cinematic Universe),” Tim interjects with a grin. 

Reasonably, Sasha ignores him. “The statement giver claims to have touched it with gloves, which is supposedly how he lived long enough to tell us about it.” 

“What is it with you and ignoring my great jokes? Some supportive girlfriend you are.” 

She scoffs. “Give me a joke worth supporting and I’ll consider it. Also, you and I both know I’m not your girlfriend unless it’s convenient for one of us, and either way I’m not giving you a pity laugh. If you want my support, you damn well better work for it.” 

He crosses his arms. “Okay, fine! What’s the title of the spooky Chaucer fanfiction again?” 

“... _The Boneturner’s Tale._ ”

Tim waggles his eyebrows at her. “Oh yeah? I’ve got a bone you can turn.”

“Jesus Christ.” 

“C’mon, tell me that’s not good!” 

“Tim. It’s _not good.”_

He sighs, collapsing back against the shelves. “Everybody’s a critic!” 

“Awww, poor baby,” Sasha simpers before rolling her eyes and returning to hunting for the book. ”You and your literature bullshit, Tim, I swear you’re going to be the death of me,” she mutters. 

Finally, Tim sighs again and resigns himself to picking his way through the stacks as well. “At least you’ll have died doing what you loved.” 

“And that is?” 

“Finding me devastatingly charming and hilarious.” He attempts to sexily re-lean against the bookshelf but misses and staggers a few steps. She laughs though, so he grins back and effortlessly plays it off like it was a purposeful move. Smooth as ever.

“Not fucking likely.” 

“Handsome too,” he carries on, pointedly ignoring her. “Can’t forget handsome. I remember you specifically s—” 

“Oh, shut _up._ Let me forget the sins of the past.” 

“Well, I wouldn’t call them _sins,”_ Tim says defensively. He knows this is where he should fire back another joke, keep up the fun (and dare he say flirty) banter so that the next few hours don’t collapse into tense silence and combing shelves in a dusty bookstore in search of _Mutilation for Dummies,_ which probably doesn’t even exist. It’s what’s expected of him, and he understands that. Understands that’s the role he plays, that’s how he holds relationships together, that’s how he keeps people from leaving. But in the end it’s all he can come up with: _I don’t think it was a mistake. I think all the mistakes came after._

Which isn’t really the tone he’s going for here.

Sasha seems wrong-footed by the lack of comeback too but doesn’t acknowledge it, just gives an unconvinced _hm_ before going back to the search. Tim exhales softly and does the same.

As predicted, they spend two fruitless and mostly silent hours scanning the shelves for unmarked black books (of all things. Couldn’t it be hot pink and/or glowing slightly?). The kid at the counter doesn’t try to help them out, mostly choosing to occupy himself with staring blankly out the window or helping the few customers that come up to the till. Fine by him, to be honest. If the statement is legitimate, it’s probably a bad idea to condemn a random twentysomething to getting accidentally deboned. He's not exactly thrilled with Jon for giving them the assignment to find a book that seems to mangle everybody who touches it, but to be fair, he did seem surprisingly apologetic about it, reminding them at least ten times before they left the Archives not to read it beyond checking for the Leitner bookplate and to handle it through cloth or plastic after that. The hovering was annoying but also sort of sweet if you ignored the fact that it was about _Canterbury Tales (Fucked Up Edition)._

“Damn,” Sasha mumbles, fingers finally coming to a stop on the last shelf, tucked away in the very back of the shop. “That was, what, two full hours?” 

“Decades, more like.” 

“What do you think the chances are that we got within inches but missed it?” 

Tim snorts. “In this mess? Nearly 100%.” 

She sighs heavily, leaning her forehead against the nearest shelf. “I mean. Probably.” 

“...Hang on,” Tim says, catching sight of a door behind her. It’s unassuming, a small wooden thing with just a dim shaft of light shining into the rest of the bookstore from underneath. The sign on it, a piece of torn notebook paper, reads “RARE/OLD BOOKS: ASK AN EMPLOYEE FOR ASSISTANCE”. 

Sasha turns her head to follow his gaze and swears under her breath. “The whole time, huh?” 

“Seems like it! Unless it appeared out of nowhere. Spooooooooky. It would be the perfect trap, too—just what we’ve been looking for all along—” 

“Not everything’s a statement, Tim,” she says, but any scorn in her voice is idle, more reflexive than anything else; she’s already striding determinedly toward the door. 

“Hey, do we want to get somebody who works here to—” 

She stops, arches an eyebrow. “What are we going to do, stroll on up to him and say ‘hi, can you point us toward your rare book room so we can steal one of them, don’t worry though, it’s for a good cause’?” 

Tim shrugs, unbothered. “Fair point. Lead on, Macduff!” 

Sasha gives a decisive nod and forges ahead. The door, luckily, is unlocked, and the two of them slip inside as quietly as they can manage. It shuts with a soft click behind them, leaving them in a cramped little room packed with glass display cases and even more shelves full of books. The lighting in here is incredibly dim, presumably to mitigate light damage to the more valuable books in the cases, but it makes the details of the space difficult to make out.

“Ugh,” Sasha says, which captures the situation quite well, in Tim’s opinion. 

“Do you know where that’s from?” he asks over his shoulder as they both move in silent agreement to opposite sides of the room, carefully pushing books aside to get looks at their spines and covers. 

“Where what’s from?” 

“‘Lead on, Macduff.’” 

“Ah. I mean, Shakespeare, right? _Macbeth,_ I’d guess, given the Mac.” 

“Yep. You know, it’s actually a misquote! It’s supposed to be _‘lay_ on, Macduff.' Macbeth says it when he’s challenging Macduff to duel him to the death.” 

She laughs. “You know, for all that you claim that you’re not a theatre kid…” 

“Oh, I’m not a theatre kid. Never was. I’m just pretentious.” 

“Now _that_ I can believe.” 

“Bold words from someone who can hardly get through a conversation without referencing Sophocles,” he chuckles. 

“Pot, kettle,” she says, waving him off. “Just let me know when you want to formally duel me. It’s been a long time coming. I’m warning you now, though, Stoker: I pull no punches.” 

“Neither do I. Playing field’s level.” 

“That implies our skills are evenly matched.” 

“In the alternate universe where we’re both trained swordsmen? I think we’re _perfectly_ matched.” 

“That’s what Inigo thought too.” 

“Hey, c’mon, you can’t weaponize _The_ _Princess Bride_ against me.” 

He can hear the smirk in her voice. “Well, I _did_ say I pull no punches.” 

Tim sighs dramatically. “All’s fair in love and war, I suppose.” 

“In this case, it’s fully the latter,” she says, and Tim lets out another wistful sigh, this time even louder. “Stop whining and find the bone tome.” 

Tim throws a mock salute her way—“Oooh, bonus points for the slant rhyme, Emily Dickinson,”— and actually gets back to it; the sooner they get out of this tiny, dusty back room, the better. They’ve got the Archives essentially to themselves anyway, with Martin out sick and Jon being, well, _Jon._

He feels sorry for the guy sometimes, really—he’d thought Jon had been high strung even before he got promoted to the manager of three people who were all older than him and, as far as he knew, more qualified. Now he’s something else entirely, shutting himself in his office for hours on end, recording those weird statements into the clunky old tape recorder, snapping at them for looking at him the wrong way. He’s got to be lonely like that. Probably not eating enough either. They’re still friends anyway, and they still go out drinking together some nights, and Tim can tell he’s mostly just stressed; he’s not blind. He can see the shadows under his eyes and the way his hands tremble just a little bit. Doesn’t make it much easier to stomach when he’s getting reamed out for sloppy research or flirting his way into a little extra information or whatever new bullshit it is this week, though. 

(Doesn’t make it much easier not to think _This should’ve been Sasha.)_

Regardless, it's hard to deny that basically having the whole office just the two of them is nice. Jon stays locked away in the head archivist’s little room at the back of the Archives, and he and Sasha get the whole open-plan office space. They still need to get work done, obviously, and they’re having to pull Martin’s weight too with him absent. But it’s good anyway. They make a hell of a team, the two of them. Researching and otherwise. Work’s mostly been like this lately, he and Sasha goofing off and bickering while continuing to be ruthlessly efficient. He gets the feeling Jon would chastise them for it if they weren’t so damn good at their jobs. 

Speaking of which— 

“Tim!” Sasha hisses from across the room. 

He pokes his head up. “You found it?” 

She shakes her head and shushes him, and he stops talking, mimes zipping his lips closed. She makes a profoundly unamused face at him. The room goes dead quiet for a few moments. She doesn’t break eye contact, both of them listening intently, until they both hear the noise at the same time: the telltale sound of far-off but definitely approaching footsteps.

“Shit,” Sasha whispers. “Shit, shit, shit. Someone’s coming.” Then, before Tim can so much as open his mouth to reply, she’s darting across the room towards him until they’re nose-to-nose. 

“Sasha—?” 

Even in the dim lighting, he can see how her hands are fluttering nervously at her sides until, suddenly, they come to settle on his shoulder and the small of his back. “Okay, so,” she whispers. “If the answer’s no, tell me and we’ll figure something else out.” 

“I—” But that’s as far as he gets before the hand on his shoulder slides up to his neck and tugs him down in one fluid movement, pulling him in for a hard, messy kiss. His brain fully short-circuits for about three seconds, but the rest of him catches up to what’s going on earlier and he responds in kind without question, resting his hands on her waist and backing up until she’s pressing him against the bookshelves. She draws away for a moment, and he can feel her breath on his lips and _This,_ he thinks, _is how I die._

“Alright?” she says under her breath. 

“Uh,” Tim says. “Yep! Works for me!” 

She nods, brow wrinkling a little in a way that still manages to register with him as _cute_ amidst the confusion of it all, and then she’s kissing him again, one hand tangled in his hair and the other fumbling at the buttons of his shirt. “Come _on,”_ she growls against his mouth as she struggles to undo them. 

He breathes out an incredulous laugh, stomach flipping. “Have to look properly disheveled?” 

Sasha doesn’t dignify that with a response, electing instead to lean up on tiptoes and keep kissing him. It’s all very—careful. Deliberate. He can practically hear the cogs whirring in her head as she pauses at the third button down on his shirt as if she’s trying to calculate what’s convincing, what will be enough. Tim hesitates for a moment, then thinks, _Well, in for a penny, in for a pound,_ and deepens the kiss, finally moves his hands from their safe position on her waist to skim up her sides, curling fingers in her hair to tug at the loose bun, which comes a bit undone within seconds. That seems to throw her off whatever careful plot she’d been following up to that point, and she lets out a soft noise against his lips that makes him grin. She digs her nails into the nape of his neck just a little too hard in retaliation—all’s fair—and again he laughs breathlessly. He grapples for a moment with her cardigan, but it wasn’t buttoned anyway, so it’s easy enough to push that off her shoulders and onto the ground. She bites down on hard his bottom lip for that, and he can imagine her snapping _You’re paying for the dry cleaning, Stoker,_ as her hands go to his belt and start undoing the clasp nonetheless, pull it free from the loops of his jeans— 

“Oh my God—you can’t just—oh my _God.”_ The kid from behind the counter. Of fucking course. 

In a move that surprises even himself, Tim is the first to break away, breathing hard. “Oh. Sorry.” He can feel himself grinning wildly. Perhaps not the most convincing apology in the world. He loops his arms around Sasha’s waist and does his best to relax against the bookcase he’s still half-pinned against. It’s maybe the least relaxed he’s ever felt in his life, entire body hot and buzzing. 

The guy has his hands over his eyes. “Can you—please leave, I don’t—tell me you didn’t mess up any of the books, or Dad’s gonna _kill_ me. These are the rare ones too, I can’t _believe—”_

“Yeah, sure, just give us a sec,” Tim says, smiling languidly. Sasha’s currently got her head buried in his chest, but that’s alright; he’s got charm and improv skills enough for both of them. 

“And then _go,”_ the guy says. “Or I’ll call 999. I swear I will. Please.” Poor dude’s maybe 22. Tim takes pity on him and forces himself to drop the cat-got-the-canary grin. 

“Okay, no worries. Sorry,” he repeats. 

The young man all but flees from the room, leaving him to deal with the aftermath of… well, whatever the hell all that was. 

With the absence of the employee, Sasha’s disentangled herself from him in seconds, blushing furiously. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have—” 

“No, no, it was fine. It was…” No good ending to that sentence. _Actually something I’ve been sort of daydreaming about for over a year? A pleasure? Something I’d like to do again?_

Luckily, she doesn’t seem too concerned with whatever he might have said. Instead, she wordlessly extends her hand towards him, clutching—ah. His belt. Tim isn’t sure whether or not he’s allowed to laugh, so he just settles on a sort of cough and takes it from her. With that, she turns away again, presumably to get her cardigan off the floor, so he awkwardly turns to face the shelves, takes several deep breaths in a mostly successful attempt to deescalate his whole situation in general, and sets about the task of putting his belt back on and rebuttoning his shirt. Even with the dim lighting and the faint reflection of the glass cases, he can tell that his hair is absolutely unsalvageable, mussed to hell and back, and there are definitely lipstick smudges smeared reddish and haphazard on his mouth. His cheeks are dark and his eyes are bright and he’s not fooling anybody with whatever calm facade he could try to fabricate here. So he doesn’t try. 

It’s not like he’s expecting a conversation to come from this anyway, no matter how much of a mess he is. He settles for raking a hand through his hair to coax it back toward something resembling the usual effortless, wavy swoop, but it’s a lost cause. Still. He should at least do something about the rest of his face. 

“Have you got a makeup wipe on you?” he calls over his shoulder. 

“Hm?” 

“Your lipstick is kind of….” 

“...Oh.” 

“Yyyep.” 

“Yeah, hang on.” She rummages around in her purse (also thrown aside to the floor at some point in the whole fiasco) for a few moments before emerging triumphant with a pack of them, which she tosses at his chest. Tim catches it (hell yeah) and starts scrubbing at his skin maybe a little too vigorously. Tries to ignore the tiny, stupid twinge of regret as he watches dark red smudge away onto the damp tissue. Obviously he can’t wander around the Archives with Sasha’s lipstick marks on his mouth, but it’s the principle of the thing, the feeling that he’s willingly hiding away the fact that any of this even happened. Either way, he feels like he’s going to some kind of special hell for people who fall head over heels for their best friend. 

Sasha seems to have finished putting herself back together at this point, having reaffixed her hair into its neat bun from before and put on her cardigan again. 

“Ready to go out and face the music?” he asks, grinning. 

She sighs and sticks out her hand matter-of-factly. “Come on, let’s go. It's already bad enough that we have to tell Jon we couldn’t find his creepy book. We might as well not prolong our suffering any longer.” Tim scans the room one last time, maybe in the hopes that some horrific bone book will leap off the shelves and attempt to steal his femurs, if only to get Jon to lay off the skeptic act. But he’s granted no such mercy. 

He takes her hand. “Right, let’s go.” In silent agreement, they head straight for the door, avoiding the gaze of the cashier, who is staring determinedly at a wall, face bright red. 

As soon as the door slams shut behind him, Tim lets out a long, relieved breath. “Thank God that’s over with.” Sasha drops his hand like she’s been burned, and he’s trying not to feel too offended about that when a thought, germinating somewhere in the back of his mind for the previous five minutes, finally hits, and he can’t stop a sudden bark of laughter from escaping him. She jumps at the noise and shoots him a dirty look for it, but he’s already gone, bending double and just fully losing it in the middle of the small side street. 

“Tim? Is everything...?” she says, looking genuinely concerned.

“No, I’m good,” he wheezes and waves her off. “I just…” 

“What is it?” She drags him off of the road and under one of the awnings of the shop. “God, are you _okay?”_

“I’m fine! Just—” 

_“What?”_

He manages to collect himself enough to say, “Sasha. We were in a bookshop. We could’ve just… said we were looking for books.” 

For a very long moment, all Sasha does is stare at him. He looks back. 

Then she breaks too, laughing so hard she has to support herself against the wall, holding her reddening face in her hands, and he laughs too, verging on hysteria, laughs until his chest aches and until they can look at each other without collapsing into helpless giggles once again. “Oh my God,” she mumbles weakly once she can get it out. “Oh my God. We could’ve just said the door was left open and we were shopping for books… at this bookshop….” 

“God,” he says, rubbing a hand over his face. He takes a centering breath. “We should go back to work.” 

Sasha’s face collapses into a grimace. “Ugh. Probably.” She sighs heavily, tilting her head back against the wall. “Can’t wait for Jon to chew us out over this.” 

“What are we going to do, give him an incident report? _Yeah, boss, I don’t know what to tell you. We couldn’t find the Leitner, but we_ did _almost get caught searching for it in the back room of the shop, and d’you know what? Our first instinct was to start rounding bases.”_

She puts her head in her hands again. “Oh God, don’t put it like that.” 

He snorts. “Oh no, we’ve ruined our reputations of virtue and chastity. Now Papá will never find us respectable husbands.” 

“Shut _up,_ Tim,” she says, smacking his shoulder, and he grins at her until, tentatively, she smiles back. _This won’t change anything,_ he thinks, and for the first time, it’s with a flood of relief. He doesn’t think he could stand reliving those awful few weeks after the hookup. 

“Obviously I’m not going to tell Jon. We’re fine. We’ll just say Operation Bone Book was a failure, which it was, but we’ve got the police reports and such anyway so we’ve already gone above and beyond. Besides, Elias is always lecturing him on how actually _doing_ something about the horrors these people experience is outside the mission statement, whatever the hell that means, so it probably wouldn’t have done us any good even if we had found it. We don’t have to elaborate. It’s not too hard to believe that one unmarked book would get lost, considering, you know, the world and also probability as a concept.” 

She nods, seeming slightly more reassured. “Right. Sounds good to me.” 

“There we go! See? We make a great team,” Tim says, nudging her with his elbow. 

Sasha raises an eyebrow, a small, reluctant smile tugging her lips sideways. “A little too great, it seems.” 

He shrugs easily and heads off down the street. “Nothing wrong with some good old fashioned chemistry to add to the buddy cop dynamic, Sash! Plus, I never said I was criticizing the method—it seemed to work well enough.” 

She lets out a startled laugh as she catches up. “I mean, I _guess.”_

“The guy _definitely_ let us be! Who knew it would be that easy? Why’d we bother constructing all those elaborate lies when you could’ve just started trying to climb me like a tree and gotten everybody to fuck right off in seconds?” 

Sasha gasps, exaggeratedly scandalized. “We can’t take the coward’s way out all the time. There is an _art_ to the fake relationship, Tim Stoker.”  
  
“Well, I guess we’d know, wouldn’t we?” he smirks. 

“We’re certainly experienced enough,” she mutters, all begrudging agreement and exasperation, but he can see out of the corner of his eye how she’s half-smiling, eyes gleaming and dark in the late afternoon sun. And it’s agony, it really is, only being able to have her in pretense, doing his best to believe that the artificial intimacy is enough because at the end of the day it’s easier to delude himself than it is to even consider letting her go entirely.

It’s pathetic. He knows it is. It’s been over a _year;_ he really has no justification for these stubborn, unwieldy feelings he doesn’t know what to do with. Tim considers himself good at this sort of thing. Getting over people, falling in love, moving forward. But sometimes she looks at him and smiles or awkwardly tells a joke that doesn’t really have a punchline or makes a reference to some literary classic he’s hardly heard of like she expects him to get it too or squints at him over her librarian glasses or gets tipsy at his kitchen counter or complains about the coffee they serve in the canteen or ties her hair back or does something like press him back against a wall of dusty books and kiss him until he somehow forgets she doesn’t mean it at all, and he’s gone, just gone. He can't imagine doing anything other than coming back to her.

It’s pathetic. He knows it is. But he also knows he doesn’t want to stop. 

“Alright?” Sasha asks. Her voice is quiet, but he still twitches in surprise which makes her huff out a soft laugh despite the genuine question. 

“Yeah, I’m good.” Tim appreciates it, the checking in. It’s not like he’s ever going to change his answer, but the fact that she cares enough to ask is… nice, actually. “You?” 

“Yeah,” she replies, bumping her shoulder against his affectionately. There was a time in his life when that tiny moment of contact wouldn’t have been enough to make his heart skip a beat, but that time is not now. 

They’re back at the Institute already, having spent most of the walk back caught up in their own heads. The silence wasn’t a bad thing. Tim can talk to almost anyone, but there are so few people he can be quiet with. That has to mean something, doesn’t it? 

“Once more unto the breach,” Tim mumbles under his breath, glaring up into the blank eyes of the stone-carved owl sculpted into the exterior walls of the Institute like an extremely boring gargoyle, and Sasha groans. 

“Please, God, no more Shakespeare, I’m begging you.”

“No promises.” 

“You’re the worst, I hope you know that.”  
  
“Probably am, yes. However, _since the statement lacks conclusive evidence and the subject got drunk off wine coolers once in the summer of 2009, I will be filing the claim in our newly created ‘discredited’ section, which, I_ assure _you, is already overflowing.”_

“Don’t be mean!” 

“Ah, come on, you know he’s gonna give us hell when we walk in with nothing after being gone the whole day.” 

“...Okay, fine. You can be a _little_ mean,” she concedes. 

“Thank you so much for your permission. I really do have the best fake girlfriend in the whole entire world,” he deadpans. 

“Who said romance is dead,” Sasha returns dryly, and together they go back down into the Archives. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aw, tim. damn it's hard not to make him depressing. things continue to be Quite Busy for me but the next chapter'll be up in the next week or so unless things go horribly wrong. sasha pov next! thanks so much for reading!!


	4. wholly to be a fool / while Spring is in the world

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Socializing with coworkers is a real struggle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter got so, so long. it was supposed to be the shortest chapter in the fic. an interlude. i don't know what happened. uhhh cw for all the usual stuff that comes with discussion of danny? but again, even tho i know i say smth like this every time—i'm not going to leave you in the content warning stuff for long bc that's not the kind of fic this is, so don't worry. we aren't here for unchecked misery and bad feelings, u know? hope you all enjoy the update :D

_4\. 13th of May, 2016_

Sasha knows that hating office parties is not a particularly revolutionary opinion. But _damn,_ she hates office parties.

She wouldn’t have even had a good excuse for avoiding it—the event's for Rosie’s 35th birthday, and because of humanity’s obsession with multiples of five, it has to be a whole thing. Usually she’d bow out gracefully, but it’s _Rosie,_ who’s been sitting behind the reception desk since before Sasha got hired here six years ago, faithfully complimenting her on new outfits and a fair amount of impulsive 2 AM self-administered haircuts, so she’d feel way too guilty about it if she tried to dodge this one. 

On the bright side, she’s managed to rope the rest of her coworkers into coming. Martin had wanted a normal, wormless reason to stay after hours anyway; Jon reluctantly agreed to attend in the hopes of generating some goodwill for the Archives team after considering how terminally annoying they’ve all been for the last two months, jumping at every invertebrate they see and demanding multiple fire extinguishers for each room; Tim was easy to convince since he tends to go to any birthday party he’s invited to, though she’d be hard-pressed to say whether it’s out of obligation or genuine enjoyment of the events. 

About an hour in, she finds herself in a back corner with Martin and a couple of old acquaintances from Research. Honestly, she’s mostly zoning out of the conversation. Not to be purposefully rude or anything; she just doesn’t care that much about Joanna oversharing about her latest failed relationship considering she hasn’t talked to her in the year since she got transferred to the Archives. 

Everybody else seems to be of the same mind, either staring listlessly somewhere to the side of Joanna’s head or doing their best to seem invested in the latest sins of Ethan and Kai, and she’s considering making an excuse to leave the conversation in the hopes of finding Tim and salvaging the evening at least slightly when Diana (or maybe Deena? Oh no) turns to her with a vaguely desperate expression and says, “So, I heard you and Tim got together?” 

This is the point where a normal person would say something to the effect of _oh, no, I’m sorry, but you’re mistaken. We’re just really good friends who hooked up once, but we’ve ostensibly moved on since then as long as you ignore our knee-jerk reaction to pretend to be in a romantic relationship whenever the opportunity presents itself, along with the fact that I haven’t managed to stay in a_ real _romantic relationship for longer than a few weeks since then, probably because I’m still hung up on him to the point that I could only really admit it to myself when I almost_ died _a month and a half ago because magic worms tried to turn me into some sort of flesh-hive, and the only reason I lived is that a literal monster with knife fingers dug one of the aforementioned worms out of my arm with its bare hands._

Then again, maybe a normal person wouldn’t say that. Sasha’s definition of “normal” is, perhaps, slightly skewed by her time working in the Archives. 

At any rate, when Diana/Deena says _so, I heard you and Tim got together?_ Sasha beams at her and replies, “Yep! Just a few months ago.”

Standing across from her in the group, Martin’s eyebrows shoot up so high they disappear into his bangs. Sasha shoots him a capital-L Look, _please for the love of God Martin Blackwood just play along,_ and he schools his expression into something placidly neutral almost scarily fast. 

Diana/Deena grins at her, relieved, while Joanna looks put out next to her. “I’m so glad to hear it. I knew the two of you would make a good couple.” 

“Oh, we do.” Sasha allows herself a self-indulgent little smile. 

“How did that happen?” Isaak asks, leaning forward in interest. 

She shrugs, stalling for time to consider; she hadn’t actually planned this far ahead. “You know, it just kind of happened, I think. It felt like a natural progression, like it was where our friendship was always headed, you know?” An easy enough lie to tell, certainly more so than the usual intricate backstories she has to come up with for these kinds of things. That almost makes it weirder, really, the fact that she can’t be overdramatic for these people. 

Diana/Deena looks over at Martin and laughs. “What’s it like working with those two together?” 

Martin doesn’t miss a beat, just snorts and says, “How do you think? There’s really nothing like third-wheeling on your nine-to-five. They’re insufferable. Sweet, don’t get me wrong, but insufferable. Guess it was worse when they were pining, though. I could barely focus on my work back then what with all the flirting and unsubtle besotted sighs.” 

“I’ll have you know I have never sighed besottedly in my _life,_ Martin,” Sasha scoffs, inordinately grateful to him for going along without question. 

He shrugs, unbothered. “That’s a rather convenient thing to tell yourself, don’t you think?” 

“Ugh,” she says, then turns back to Diana/Deena, Joanna, and Isaak. “Don’t tell anybody in HR about this, if you don’t mind. Or anybody you think might tell HR. To be honest, we really don’t want to deal with the paperwork.” _Don’t tell anybody in general, actually; that would make the inevitable fallout way easier to deal with._

Diana/Deena beams, “Oh, _obviously._ I don’t want to ruin this! It’s the best gossip I’ve heard in months.”  
  
Sasha rolls her eyes. “Please. It’s hardly gossip that two of your ex-coworkers you were sort of acquaintances with are in a committed long-term relationship.” 

Diana/Deena’s face goes flat at that. “Right. Of course.” _Whoops,_ Sasha thinks. That kind of thing is always awkward—knowing you said something a little too harsh for friendly conversation but also knowing it was minor enough that apologizing would be even weirder in this atmosphere. 

The ensuing uncomfortable pause is when Tim chooses to make an appearance. Because of course it is. 

“Hey, guys!” he grins, shouldering his way into the group to stand beside Sasha, which was probably a thoughtless choice, but it’s certainly good for her purposes as far as the act goes. She wastes no time, just slinging an arm around his waist casually and leaning up to kiss his cheek as soon as he's in range. A pretty unambiguous signal, and much to her relief he doesn’t even blink, only takes a nearly imperceptible moment to recalibrate before tilting his head and smiling down at her fondly. “Hi,” he adds just to her, softer. God. It really doesn’t matter how many times they do this—she never quite gets used to the sudden tenderness in his eyes. 

He looks at her for another moment as if searching her face for something (hopefully not a logical explanation for why any of this is happening because she couldn’t provide one for the life of her) before clearing his throat quietly, looping his arm over her shoulders, and turning back to the group fully. “How are you all doing tonight?” 

They all respond with enthusiasm on varying levels of faked, and, having all completed the ritual of harmless lies necessary to be part of society, settle into idle office-party-typical conversation: baseless speculation about who’s sleeping with who, complaining about Elias’ latest bullshit, talking about the weirdest new acquisitions of Artifact Storage. 

Sasha doesn’t enjoy that last topic much, but people keep turning to her for input anyway. She’d gained a bit of a reputation in Research for having survived Artifact Storage both a) mentally and physically intact and b) mostly still a skeptic. People who went through Artifact Storage were generally seen as raving lunatics to the rest of the Institute, purely because it was very hard to go through all _that_ and continue to claim that the supernatural was fake, which was the position of most Magnus employees. Hard to deny, though, after spending three months writing in the memory book, testing out the haunted furniture, and conversing with haunted dolls. Still, Sasha maintained that most of the stuff that came across their desks was bullshit, and she gained a weird sort of respect from the other researchers for it. Unfortunately, that means that even now, years after leaving that department, people still ask her to recount what she dealt with there. 

Tim must pick up on her discomfort, though, because he manages to gracefully steer them away from the topic after a couple of questions. She lets out a soft sigh of relief when he gets them bickering over the merits of the new gastropub that’s opened up two blocks over and leans into his side for a moment. By now, he’s taken his arm from over her shoulder in favor of gesticulating wildly as he speaks, but he goes still when she touches him, then curls his arm back around her and lets his hand settle on her upper arm. He keeps talking, free hand continuing to gesture while his thumb rubs idle, featherlight circles over her bicep. Like the easy affection is effortless. _Christ, I don’t deserve him,_ she thinks, watching him laugh at one of Isaak’s quips and fire back one of his own through a wide grin. 

There’s a certain tenseness to him tonight. It takes her a couple of minutes to notice, but it’s definitely there. He’s not obvious about it. He’s too good of an actor for that. But she can’t miss it—his jaw is tight whenever he’s not talking and his laugh is just slightly too loud and he’s talking fast to the point of nearly stumbling over his words and his jokes are sharper than usual, more cutting. Tim’s known as a generally energetic, sociable guy which is probably why it flies under the radar; looking around their little huddle, it doesn’t seem like anybody else has picked up on it. When Sasha’s stressed, she knows she gets weirdly quiet and noticeably snappish, but Tim just seems more fiery than usual, a sort of manic brightness in his eyes that you can only really find if you’re looking for it. 

She’s trying to figure out a way to pull him aside when he suddenly drops his arm from around her and rolls his shoulders back. “Think I’m gonna mill around a bit more, maybe see if Jon’s tried to sneak out yet,” he says to the group at large, giving them a wave and then disappearing into the loose crowd of Institute employees. Sasha watches him go, brow furrowed, before turning back to Diana/Deena, Joanna, Isaak, and Martin, only to see them all slowly dispersing, leaving just Martin. Martin’s got his hands shoved into his pockets awkwardly, half-leaning against the wall. He is also staring at her with extremely obvious criticism. 

To his credit, he at least waits until everybody else is ostensibly out of earshot before hissing, “What the _hell_ was all that about?”

Sasha shrugs as nonchalantly as she can manage, given the circumstances. “You know how sometimes you start doing something with a friend, and at first you know it’s kind of a weird thing to do, but then you do it enough that it starts feeling really normal even though you’re aware it’s not a thing people actually do? It’s that. Thanks for going along with it, by the way.” 

“Oh my God, how many times have you done this?” 

She screws up her face. “Uh. Several? I lost count, honestly. More than ten, though. It’s been around a year and a half since we started it.”

Martin just stares at her incredulously. “And it feels _normal?”_

“More or less, yeah,” she says defensively. “Like I said, I know it’s not a thing people tend to do, but I really don’t know why, honestly. It works. People will buy it.” 

“But _why?”_

“I don’t know!” She can feel herself starting to get flustered in spite of herself. “I—look, I’m not here to be interrogated.” 

Martin laughs. “Yeah, well, you pulled me into this lie, I at least deserve an explanation about why it’s happening.” 

She lowers her voice a little. “Listen, just—don’t make a big deal about it, alright?”

He looks at her evenly. “Is there something to make a big deal about?” 

“I don’t—” She takes a breath. Might as well be honest. “I don’t know? There… shouldn’t be.” 

“Okay, but that doesn't mean that there isn't.” 

“Yeah, guess not,” she murmurs. “I mean. It’s not really a thing. It hasn’t been for a year and a half.” 

“What do you mean?” 

“Well, the first time we did—” she gestures at the general situation—“you know, _this,_ we hooked up afterwards.”  
  
“Ah,” Martin intones. 

“Yeah, well. You can probably guess what happened next. Super awkward for a while, then we mutually agreed that we were better off as friends.” 

“Mutually?” 

“I…” Sasha trails off. “I thought it’s what we both wanted. It was sort of… Back in Research, I wanted the head archivist position so badly. I knew Gertrude was getting old, figured she’d either retire or die in the next few years. I knew it would look bad to get into a relationship with a coworker. Unprofessional, and you know how Elias is about that kind of thing. If it ended poorly, it would be even worse. I just couldn’t stomach the idea of giving up a shot at getting the job I’d wanted for years for a relationship that might not last more than a few months. So I brought it up after a few weeks, I told him we were better off not giving it a shot, he agreed. Tim’s my friend. I didn’t want to mess that up.” 

“...Right,” Martin says dubiously. 

“Don’t look at me like that,” she mutters. 

“I’m not looking at you like anything. I’m just wondering why—I mean, you’re clearly still not over it—” 

“Hang on, I didn’t say—” 

“You didn’t have to. The best lies are usually just a couple degrees from the truth anyway. Plus, I saw how you looked at him. That can’t all be an act,” he scoffs. 

Sasha grimaces. “I… alright, maybe. But like I said, the first time it happened was in, like, 2014. Even if Tim did have serious feelings for me back then, that was ages ago. And you know Tim—he bounces back quickly from rejection. That’s who he is.” 

Martin still looks doubtful, but he seems to relent a bit, holding up his hands in surrender. “All I’m saying is this whole thing can’t be an accident at this point. On at least some level, the two of you _have_ to be fabricating the necessity for it to keep happening. And I mean, no offense, Sasha, but I think Jon’s going to be the head archivist for a while yet. There’s nothing standing in the way of you two now.” 

She sighs. “Martin, I appreciate it, I really do. But if a conversation was going to happen, it would have by now! It’s fine. It’s not going to be a thing.” 

Martin rolls his eyes at her. “Have you considered that maybe, just _maybe,_ he’s thinking the same goddamn thing? You set boundaries and he’s respecting them because he doesn’t know they’ve changed since you put them up.” 

“That’s… fair, actually.” 

“I know,” he says with poorly disguised smugness. 

They stand there in silence for a few moments, ruminating, until Sasha sighs again. “Sorry for gay best friend-ing you. You must get _really_ tired of tipsy women in their thirties telling you about their love lives.” 

He actually snorts at that. “Yeah, little bit. At least I actually know you. Usually it’s just random women in clubs.” 

“Yikes.” 

“Mhm.” 

“Well, I’m happy to return the favor any time you like.” She grins wolfishly then. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed your thing for Jon.” 

“I—what?” His voice pitches up an octave. “I don’t know what you’re talking about—why would I ever—” 

Sasha laughs, not unkindly. “You aren’t exactly subtle. Plus, turnabout’s fair play, Blackwood.” 

Martin heaves a sigh. “Yeah, I know. And it’s… I mean, yeah, I do like him, but I can’t see it actually going anywhere, you know?” 

“I guess. But you can’t be certain, right? I’ve known Jon a few years. He’s got a hell of a bark, sure, but not much bite. And he’s really quite sweet, in his own awkward, prickly way.” 

Another sigh, this one significantly more wistful. “Yeah...” 

“Oh, you’ve got it _bad.”_ Cartoon hearts are all but physically manifesting around his head.

He groans and rubs a hand over his face. “I know, I know. Look, in my defense, I _am_ here 24/7 and you know that man never goes home. There’s literally nothing for me to do here after hours other than catch feelings for him.” 

She snorts. “You could reorganize our disaster of an archive.” 

Martin starts to reply, but that’s when Sasha catches sight of Tim walking quickly out of a larger group of partygoers, eyes darting around the room. She wonders what he’s looking for; his gaze seems wild and panicked but at the same time so intense. 

“Hang on,” she tells Martin distractedly, and he stops midsentence, brow furrowing. 

“What—?” 

“I’m gonna go check on Tim.” If Martin replies, she doesn’t hear it; she’s already striding off purposefully. 

He’s walking too fast for her to subtly catch up, so she picks up her pace and manages to intercept him at the door, placing a light hand on his bicep. “Hey, are you—” 

“I’m fine,” he says tightly. “Just getting some air.” His face is carefully blank. For such a good liar, he really is awful at pretending to be okay. 

“Mind if I come with?” 

He gives her a long look, and the silence stretches out long enough that she’s genuinely considering just dropping the issue and retreating to the appetizer table, but finally Tim shrugs. “Fine by me.” 

“Right,” she says, wrong-footed but trying not to show it, and pushes past him through the doorway. “C’mon,” she calls over her shoulder, and Tim jogs a few paces to catch up before falling into step alongside her. 

They don’t say anything as they walk through the dim hallways of the Institute; Tim doesn’t even ask where they’re going, just follows her in silence with his hands shoved into the pockets of his jeans. Next to the library, there’s a well-hidden side door that opens out into a cramped alleyway that runs along the walls of the Institute. She used to go there often back when she was still working in Artifact Storage, usually during her lunch breaks just so she could get some air and a few moments of relative quiet, but also sometimes to escape after a particularly awful assignment. She holds the door open for him and follows him out. It’s still early, only 8 PM, so the sun is just beginning to set, limning the alley in a dull, watery gold. 

Tim flops down on the stoop with a huffed exhale, staring blankly at the brick wall across the small stretch of pavement, and she takes a hesitant seat next to him, giving him plenty of time for him to tell her to go away. He doesn’t. Just takes his hands out of his pockets and looks at them for a while. They’re trembling slightly. 

“If you don’t mind me asking,” Sasha murmurs. “Are you alright?” 

He quirks a humorless smile at her. “You already asked that.” 

She chuckles dryly. “Yeah, and you lied. Not very convincingly either, I might add.” 

“Well. I _am_ fine. Should be.” 

“What happened?” 

A long, drawn-out exhale. “It’s nothing, really. Just, you know, it’s hard to be… on. All the time. Especially on days like this.” 

It looks like he’s been picking at his nails nervously; she can see where the skin is frayed and red, and he starts up again while she’s watching, as if unconscious of the action. “Days like this?” 

The smile turns even more bitter. “Danny’s birthday. He would’ve been thirty today.” 

“Oh. Tim, I’m so sorry, I had no idea.” 

He shrugs, trying for his usual airiness but missing the mark by far. “‘S alright. You couldn’t have known.” 

“Still, I shouldn’t have pressured you into coming.” 

He raises his eyebrows, unimpressed. “I made the choice myself, Sasha, I’m a big boy. Honestly, I kind of thought the social part of it would distract me. I guess I was wrong. Turned out that the stress of trying to keep a crowd of people happy made it worse.” 

“That’s fair, I suppose,” she murmurs. Tim goes back to staring straight ahead, gaze unfocused. Sasha goes back to pretending she’s not studying him. The line between his eyebrows, the small downturn of his mouth, the little birthmark on his neck, the hair that sticks up defiantly at the back of his head. The tension around his eyes and the clench of his jaw. God, she wishes she were better at this. In school, her teachers had always praised her grasp of language. So eloquent, so analytical. So _useless_ when it matters, when it’s practical, when it comes to comforting someone she really, genuinely loves. 

He finally seems to realize he’s been picking at the skin around his nails and forces himself to stop, flexing his fingers out as far as they can do before balling them into loose fists and resting them on his knees. “Almost wish I’d started smoking in uni,” he mutters wryly, half to himself. “Give me something to do with my hands, at least.” 

Sasha looks at him curiously. “Do you actually?” 

He shakes his head with a bitter smile. “No, not really. Probably a bad idea. Nicotine’s rough enough on its own but what with the ADHD and all, I’ve got the addictive personality too, so it’s more likely to be a recurring problem for me. ‘S why I don’t really drink either, unless it’s socially. Anyway, drifted closer to... alcoholism, I guess, than I’d like. After Danny. Don’t feel like going anywhere near something like that again.” 

“Makes sense,” Sasha says, not really able to contribute much more beyond that. She can imagine it happening so easily, that’s the thing. Tim getting more and more erratic, eyes wild and bright and gleaming with an inexpressible mania, searching for anything that’ll carry him through to tomorrow. Tim gone dull and angry and lonely, hardening into something barely recognizable at all. 

He glances over at her and exhales a breath of a laugh. “Don’t look at me like that, Sasha. I’m still always willing to go back to yours for a drink after work.”

“You know that’s not what I’m worried about.” 

The smile fades from his face. “You don’t have to worry about me.” 

She snorts. “Of course I do, you idiot. We're friends. You’d do the same for me.”

He looks away uncomfortably. “Well, yeah. Obviously I would.” 

The same lull again. Too much to say and none of the words to say them. _You’re allowed to need people too, you know_ and _I just want you to be okay_ and _You don’t have to be funny all the time, I promise I’ll stay anyway_ and _You’re my best friend. I’d never had one before now. You understand that, don’t you?_ and _I’m not sure identity exists, but if it does then I know you’re part of mine in a way I can’t get rid of, and I can’t decide if that’s better or worse_ and _I think you know me. I think I want you to. I spend my whole adult life thinking I can’t be understood, that nobody can be understood and that’s the whole goddamn point of being human, and then you roll in with your grin and easy conversation and uncanny luck at board games and constant fucking references and the same tinhat conspiracy theories as me, and you know what? I still think I can’t be fully understood. But I think I want you in particular to not fully understand me. I think I want you to keep trying, and I want you to learn more of me than anybody else ever will. I think I want to do the same for you. I think you’re worth knowing. All the idiosyncrasies, all the dumb romcoms you pretend not to be invested in, all the petty shit you said when you were in high school and regretted, all the awful manuscripts you had to read when you still worked in publishing, all the questions you so confidently answered wrong in university, all the little indie coffeeshops you keep going back to even though they charge you way too much for a plain lowfat latte, all the times you nearly stepped out into the middle of traffic without thinking, all the clothes you never wear but won’t get rid of because they hold too much sentimental value. What a stupid thing to care about, right? Whole goddamn world out there, hundreds of thousands of millions of years of history going back past the point of comprehension, and I’d be happy with knowing_ exactly _how your face looks when you’re trying not to smile._

At which point Sasha realizes she’s waxing philosophical about the meaning of love and identity while her friend sits next to her grieving the life his younger brother never had a chance to live, and she tells herself to shut the fuck up. 

“Do you want to come back to my place?” she asks. “It’s not too late. We can cook an actual dinner, something low-effort but still good. I’ve got packaged tortellini and the ingredients for homemade pesto.” 

Tim snaps out of whatever haze he’s drifted into during the silence. “Yeah, I—that sounds nice, actually.” 

“That _is_ why I suggested it,” she says dryly, and he rolls his eyes at her, a faint but genuine (albeit exasperated) smile making its way across his face for the first time since they came outside. She’s hoping to tilt this towards something resembling a normal evening. A slightly more maudlin one than expected, sure, but normal nonetheless. They deserve it, honestly, after the hellscape work’s been for the last two months. The Great Worm Siege Of 2016 has taken a toll on all of them—Martin most of all, of course, but she’s already decided that this night is purely about _their_ struggles, not their coworkers’, so she’s disregarding that for the moment—and it would do them good to think about something other than fleshworms and demented circuses and statements that can’t quite be explained away. 

“Right,” he replies quietly. He’s bouncing his knee up and down rather than picking at his skin now, which is an improvement. “Sorry,” he says when he notices her watching, and he tries to still himself. 

Sasha winces at the _sorry_ more than anything else. “It’s fine, Tim. You know I don’t mind. And we can stay here awhile longer too. If you’d like.” 

“Yeah,” he mumbles, then glances over at her and valiantly attempts a smile. “Hah. Sorry. I’m probably not going to be great company tonight.” 

“Tim, I don’t keep you around for entertainment,” she tells him, grabbing his hand on an impulse. “I keep you around because I like you. You don’t have to be funny all the time, that’s not—that’d be stupid.” 

Tim looks at her hand on top of his, then back at her face, eyebrows raised slightly. “Okay,” he says after a brief pause. “Okay.” 

Slowly, Sasha leans her weight against his side, giving him plenty of time to move away. He doesn’t. She’s not propping herself up on him, just there. Pressure and warmth, hopefully comforting. It’s not cold out, but she thinks it’s the idea of it that’s important, the human contact. She feels him inhale, sharp and shuddery, before exhaling in a long sigh. His breaths even out after that for the most part, and after a long moment, he tilts his head to lean against hers. His hair is ticklish on her cheek, but she doesn’t shift away. She reminds herself to keep breathing steadily, in and out, and when their breaths start to sync up, she focuses on it even more, then tries not to focus on it so it’s not weird. Christ, she’s not good at this. 

She’s never had to comfort somebody before. Never felt much of the urge to, really. There was always somebody more qualified for the job; she’d give anybody having a hard go of it a few genuine kind words and a squeeze on the shoulder before passing them off to somebody closer to them as soon as she could. She didn’t think she was made for this, just in general. Sitting with someone in silence shoulder-to-shoulder as the mild chill of a May evening sets in. 

But it’s… nice, almost. Strange but nice. The lack of urgency.

Tim keeps her on her toes all the time, never lets her win even the most ridiculous argument unless she’s earned it, fires off jokes so fast it makes her dizzy sometimes. They clash constantly for the sheer joy of it, loud and boisterous and grinning all the while. This quiet, here and now, is unsettling in contrast but not bad either. It’s not quiet for lack of anything to say, just quiet because none of it needs to be said at all. Cars passing on the main street a couple hundred feet away. People talking and laughing as they head out to clubs or home from work. The two of them side by side on a dirty stoop in silence. 

“Alright,” Tim says after several minutes. He hasn’t been still, necessarily, but his fidgeting has lost its frenetic, restless edge, the movements dying down to him running his fingernails over the rough seams of his jeans with Sasha watching the idle motion through unfocused eyes, back and forth. Soothing by proxy, almost. 

“Ready?” 

“Yeah.” He sighs. “Do we have to go back to the party to say goodbye to everyone?” 

Sasha makes a face. “Nah. They’ll live without. We can text Rosie our apologies later.” _We._ Like they’re a unit. Like they both go home to the same place each day. 

She hates when she notices her own Freudian slips. 

“Ah, you’re right. I’m sure they’ll find a way to continue on without our glowing presences, as painful as I’m sure it’ll be.” He gets to his feet and offers her a hand up. 

She takes it. “It’s not our fault we light up a room.”

“Yeah! It’s somebody else’s turn. We can’t pull everybody’s weight all the time, the freeloaders,” he grins, tugging her up so she’s standing. She overbalances and staggers a bit, has to brace herself against the doorframe with a flailing hand to keep herself from falling right into him. She shoots him a glare, and he snickers. “Sorry.” 

“No you’re not,” Sasha mutters, but she can feel herself smiling anyway; she’d prefer a hundred insincere apologies from this man than a single real one because that’s how she knows things are really bad, when he feels like he has to actually say sorry and mean it. 

“You can’t prove it!” he calls over his shoulder with a laugh as he walks back into the Institute’s halls. They head for the main doors, trying not to walk conspicuously fast but eager to leave the place behind. Thankfully nobody intercepts them on the way out, though; with any luck, they’re all still at Rosie’s party. Outside, there’s a singular silvery worm writhing on the ground, predictably enough. 

Sasha grimaces and crushes it under her heel in one decisive stomp. “Gross.” 

“Ooooh, vicious,” Tim says, watching her scrape the splattered worm remains off her boot onto the asphalt. 

“You’d be vicious about it too if you’d had one of these things trying to burrow into your flesh a month ago,” she grumbles. The last bits of gunk are stubborn to come off the sole of her shoe, and she ends up letting out an aggrieved sigh and resigning herself to having to get rid of the residue later on with steel wool or whatever. 

She looks up to see Tim’s gaze dart away from her arm, like he’s guilty to have been caught out. The scar must be showing; she’d nearly forgotten about it, but this is the first time she’s had cause to wear a short-sleeved blouse to work. She’d taken a day or two off work after the incident with Michael to recuperate. Jon had tried to convince her to take three, but something about staying away that long didn’t sit quite right with her, even though the wound had been healing funny. It’ll probably scar permanently. It’s not pretty. Not clean, even a month later. The skin where it dug those awful fingers in is uneven and oddly warped, spiraling outward in an area the size of her palm. Weird. To be fair, she _had_ treated it herself, but she’s not an idiot; she knows hydrogen peroxide doesn’t do that no matter how bad you are at First Aid. It’s half-hidden by her blouse, so she hadn’t given much thought to it while getting dressed in the morning, but now she tugs the edge of her sleeve down self-consciously, and if anything Tim looks even more guilty at that.

“It’s fine,” Sasha says, ears burning. 

Tim shrugs and takes another clumsy but valiant stab at normality, which she's thankful for. “It looks kinda cool, honestly. Like a comic book character design or something. All very dramatic.” 

“I hope I’d get a cooler supervillain origin story than ‘I went to a graveyard, a worm tried to turn me into a flesh-hive, and then a guy I met at a coffeeshop dug it out with his bare hands’. I think I deserve a _little_ more agency than that,” she scoffs. 

“Well, _I_ think it’s a cool story. Obviously it would be dramatized in an adaptation, though, c’mon. That’s the industry. But super _villain_ origin story, huh? You really think that’s what you’d be?”

“I mean, I wouldn’t violate the _Geneva Conventions,_ Tim. I just want to wreak some havoc. But, like, in a fun way!” 

“Fun havoc?” 

“You know! Decimate a city center! Light Buckingham Palace on fire! Steal something from the Louvre just to prove that I can!”

“Oooh, I _like_ it. We can be a crime- _doing_ duo. Buddy cop trope subversion.” 

“Yeah, sure, you can be my sidekick. Matching costumes and everything.” 

“Or rival villains! Nothing like a good enemies-to-friends-to-lovers story.” 

Sasha snorts. “You’re so predictable. Anyways, how would we do rival villains?” 

“Like, you know… We’re both evil but. Different. The enemy of my enemy is... still my enemy, I guess.” When she arches a skeptical eyebrow at him, he groans. “Look, I don’t know. Indulge me.” 

“Yeah, alright. Like… we both want to steal the crown jewels but we both get there at the same time. Then it turns into a competition, both us trying to do more and more dramatic works of villainy. Like the Cold War, minus the racism.” 

“And thus begins our torrid romance!” 

“Our violent rivalry, you mean.”

He waves a hand dismissively. “Same thing. You’ll come around in time.” 

“Sure.” 

“Orrrrrr I could be the valiant hero rival. You’ve still got the classic enemies-to-friends-to-lovers story that way.” 

“Sounds like the start of the world’s worst, I don’t know, _Megamind_ porno,” she mutters. 

Tim flutters his eyelashes at her. _“Oh, no, you’ve got me_ all tied up, _Ms. James..._ _What are you going to do to me now that I’m_ completely defenseless _with_ nobody _coming to set me free?”_

“Oh my God, you’re the worst.” 

“Ah, you love it.” 

“Absolutely I do not,” she laughs, shoving him. Satisfyingly, he staggers a little and glares at her when she laughs at him even louder for it.

“Absolutely you _do,”_ he parrots back, imitating her voice and doing an upsettingly good job of it. 

She wrinkles her nose at him but doesn’t refute it. “Either way, I changed my mind. You’ve lost rival privileges, we’re back to crime-doing duo, and you’re definitely just my sidekick.” 

“I can live with that,” he concedes. 

“How magnanimous of you,” she says dryly. “Have you ordered an Uber yet or are we walking all the way to Harringay?” He doesn’t answer, just pulls out his phone and starts tapping away. She rolls her eyes. “Some sidekick you are.” 

“What are you gonna do about it, fire me? You would never. Anyways, uh,” he checks the screen, “Travis is on his way. Three minutes.” 

“I would and, in fact, _will,_ assuming the poor performance continues.” 

He gasps. “I’ll have you know I’m a _great_ performer!” 

“I know, I know. Smartest man alive, best actor on the stage, employee of the month a decade and a half running, star football player, crown king of romance both real and fabricated, et cetera et cetera, truly what _can’t_ Timothy Stoker do,” she deadpans. 

Tim sniffs haughtily. “Finally, somebody who appreciates me for what I really am.” 

“Well, _someone_ had to do it.”

“You don’t have to make it sound like such a chore,” he complains. “I’m a goddamn delight.” 

“Yeah, yeah,” she says fondly, nudging his arm with her elbow. 

Travis arrives soon enough. The car ride home isn’t too awkward, despite the inherent weirdness of being in a random guy’s car, which Sasha never really gets over no matter how many times she takes an Uber somewhere. Tim’s preoccupied too for obvious reasons, gone quiet now that they aren’t out in the open. She keeps conversation going, though—nothing high-energy, just talk about the latest projects at work (weird boat whistle or something), whatever’s going on with Jon and Martin (Tim swears, hand to God, that he saw Jon blush after Martin brought him tea once, but Sasha’s not believing it until there’s photo evidence), the latest weird shit Elias has done (looked at a tape recorder and licked his lips hungrily. Like, what the _fuck)._ Traffic’s lighter than it could be, considering it’s a Friday night, and it’s hardly long at all until they’re both thanking Travis and making their way up the stairs to her flat. 

Tim’s trying his best for normalcy, despite it all, but he seems to calm down a bit once they’re in the privacy of her living room, some residual tension unspooling from his neck and shoulders. She suggests that they put on some music while they cook, and Tim scrolls through playlists while she gets out ingredients. The packaged tortellini in her fridge, bunches of leaves from the basil plants she keeps growing by her window, garlic, salt, pine nuts, parmesan, olive oil. 

When she takes the mortar and pestle down from the cupboard, Tim raises an eyebrow quizzically. “Whoa, actual mortar and pestle? Thought you’d have a food processor.” 

“I do, but we’re not using it,” she says. “Gonna have to put your back into it.” 

He pouts out his lower lip. “Can’t I just stand here and look pretty?” 

Sasha laughs. “You’ll be doing that anyway, Stoker. We might as well get some use out of you while you’re at it.” 

He heaves out a dramatic sigh and gestures for her to hand over the mortar and pestle, and she does so. “If you insist.” 

“I do.” 

“In that case— _as you wish.”_ Cue another even more dramatic sigh. 

“Oh, fuck _off.”_ She refuses to feel anything about that particular _Princess Bride_ reference. She is _not_ wasting time reading anything into it. Instead, she tosses the salt shaker at his chest perhaps harder than strictly necessary. Unfortunately for her sense of vindication, he catches it effortlessly. Jackass. 

It’s hard not to get lost in the rhythm of cooking, but that’s why she gave herself the job with the fewest steps; she fills a pot with water, sets it on the stove over high heat, and waits for it to boil. It seems like a good idea to stay present tonight, even if it means she’s got nothing to do but kill time until she can add the pasta. Tim’s working away with the mortar and pestle, grinding the basil into a fine paste, while some song—it’s a little too quiet to be sure, but she thinks it’s “Angel from Montgomery,” as if either of them even know or care where Montgomery is; she’s just going to have to come to terms with the fact that he’s got a disturbingly similar taste in music to her dad—plays quietly in the background. 

He must feel her eyes on him because he turns to look over his shoulder, already smiling. “Seriously, Sash? Couldn’t just give me the food processor?” 

“You’ve got to learn the value of good, honest work somehow,” she says. 

“I spend forty hours a week doing good, honest work!” he protests. 

“You _really_ don’t. Like fifty percent of our job is lying to or impersonating people to get information we shouldn’t have, Tim.” 

He huffs. “Good work, then, at the very least.”

“I could debate you on that one as well.” 

“I’m sure you could,” he says with a condescending nod. 

She wrinkles her nose and kicks him in the shin lightly for that. He barely reacts, just hops out of the way with a little grin and returns to attacking the basil leaves with vigor. 

The domesticity of it all is sickening. Sasha’s been trying not to think about it like that, but it’s hard to ignore now that she doesn’t have anything to occupy herself with—he looks so natural against this backdrop, taking up space in her cramped kitchen and helping her make dinner, humming along to “Brown Eyed Girl” (Seriously? Van Morrison now?). Bomber jacket pushed up to his elbows so he doesn’t get them in the sauce, cuffed jeans, pineapple-patterned socks. She could see him standing there in a thousand different outfits at a thousand different times of day cooking a thousand different meals. And it should be weird, she thinks, navigating cooking with him now in the small space. It isn’t. Shouldering him out of the way to put the tortellini in the now-boiling water, reaching around him to get out bowls and silverware, rolling her eyes and taking over the grinding of the basil when he whines about his wrist getting tired. He still helps, though, pouring olive oil into the mixture while she keeps mashing it up, adding salt and parmesan over her shoulder. It’s not like it’s difficult to make pesto, but she’s inordinately proud of them when they’re done anyway. There's too much for them to actually use—she knows Tim doesn’t like much sauce on his food, the weirdo; he claims it drowns out the rest of the flavor and gets it all soggy—so she puts what they aren’t going to use into tupperware for later and drains the tortellini in the sink. 

They eat dinner together on her sofa. She pours them both wine, her special occasion stuff (not anything _extremely_ fancy, but she shelled out more than thirty pounds for it, so she figures that’s close enough). Usually it would worry her, losing track of time like this, but tonight she hardly even minds; tomorrow’s a Saturday and they’ve got all the time in the world. Wine drunk, she thinks, is the best kind of drunk. Turns the world pleasantly hazy, makes her feel warm inside without burning. Makes her clumsy but not out of control. Makes the words come just a bit easier, even if they’re stupid. 

“Ghosts?” 

“...maybe,” she admits. 

He laughs, surprised. “Only maybe? After everything in Artifact Storage?” 

“Well, that’s more than I’d say ‘bout most supernatural stuff! Listen, it’s not—I could believe it, you know, there’s just so much to a human, all the—the neurons and impulses and knowledge and whatever, it’s not _too_ weird to think that something sticks around after we die. You?” 

“...dunno.” 

She doesn’t press him on it. “Haunted houses?” 

“I don’t—wait, what’s the difference between that and a ghost?” 

“No, no, like… haunted architecture. I’ve—I saw a video on it, documentary or something—it's stuff that sticks around… after. Some houses have bad bones, y’know? Sometimes people in there make them go bad, though, with all the stuff that goes on. Doors that get slammed so many times the action keeps happening even after there’s no one left to do it. Humming from the basement. That sort of thing. ‘S the house that’s haunted, not who’s inside.” 

“Alright, I can see that. Magic?” 

She snorts. “What, like wizards or whatever?” 

“No, like—oh, I don’t know. Manipulating the world in ways science can’t explain. Fire out of nothing. Stuff like that.” 

“Too broad,” she dismisses with a flap of her hand. “Next question.” 

“Okay, fine, jeez,” he mutters. “Mothman, then.” 

_“Mothman?”_

“Yeah! The Mothman!” 

She laughs outright. “No, Tim, I don’t think the fucking _Mothman_ exists.”

“No, I mean—alright, ignoring all the weird prophecy stuff. Say it’s just a real—like, a _really_ fuckin’ big moth.” 

“I refuse to believe that anything six entire feet tall can fly.”

“That’s where you draw the line? Sure, creepy distorted monster men are totally cool, but—”

Sasha barrels on heedlessly. “—like, there’s a reason humans never evolved wings; the amount of muscle mass we’d need to carry our weight would be too heavy without adding more muscle mass. It would never work out. Nothing that big can fly, Tim.” 

“Airplanes.” He grins at her lazily.

 _“Fuck_ you, that’s not the same and you know it.” She takes another drink. 

“Fine, then. Quetzalcoatlus.” 

“Sorry, what?” 

“You know, the—the big dinosaurs. Wingspan of over thirty feet. _They_ could fly.” 

“Those could’ve been like penguins,” she says petulantly. “Or dodos. Flightless.” 

“Boooo. You’re no fun.” 

She rolls her eyes. “My answer's not changing. Uh…” She sighs. “Damn. I'm out of phenommem—phenomenons.” 

“Already? You really _must_ be tired.” 

“I am not.” 

“You know, for someone so good at lying, you really aren’t that convincing.” 

Sasha nudges at his leg with her foot, frowning. “Could say the same about you.” 

He chuckles ruefully, nudges her leg back. “Fair enough, I guess.” 

“Fine: I don’t _want_ to be tired.” 

That lopsided smile. “Not the same thing, Sash.” _Sash._ She can’t think of anybody else she’d let call her that and get away with it. There’s nothing more damning, she thinks, than allowing somebody to be your exception.

“Close enough to it,” she protests, draining the rest of her glass. His smile widens and he tilts his head. God, it’s just—it’s unfair. In the hazy yellowish light coming from the kitchen, he looks like an oil painting, smudged and soft-edged and golden and beautiful. He could be anybody at all. He could only be Tim. 

“I’m tired too,” he admits. “‘S late. We should get some sleep. I don’t wanna have a headache tomorrow.” 

“Lightweight.” 

“Yeah,” he agrees, grinning softly. “I’m alright with that.” 

There’s a brief moment’s silence, and Sasha hesitates. Then: “You don’t have to sleep on the couch tonight.” 

His brow furrows, and he tries for his usual easy smirk. “You asking me to come t’ bed with you?” 

“Literally, not figuratively,” she mumbles. If her heart’s not in it, that’s her own business, and she knows Tim will take her at her word anyway. He’s good like that, even if it makes things more difficult for her. 

“I couldn’t do that,” he says quietly. 

“Yes you can. Plus, I don’t want to hear your bitching tomorrow when your back’s sore ‘cause you tried to sleep on a couch at thirty-four and your joints aren’t what they used to be.” 

He sighs, rubbing at his forehead. “I don’t want to impose.” 

“It’s really not an imposition,” she insists. “I don’t want you to have to go to sleep alone. Don’t say no a third time.” 

He quirks a smile at her. “What happens if you’re thrice-denied by me before the cock crows?” 

She beams back at him. “Well, I’m not going to get crucified later on, but I’ll definitely be _cross.”_

“......Oh my God. Oh my _God.”_ Tim shoves his face into the couch cushions. “That was the _worst—”_

She tips her empty glass at him in a mockery of a toast, laughing. “Listen, if I can put up with your terrible jokes, you can deal with mine. I’ve earned it, knowing you for this long.” 

“I guess,” he groans. 

“Thank you, I’ll be here all night. Now come to _bed,_ Timothy.” 

Tim gives another tortured sigh but relents, pushing himself upright and finishing off the last of his wine (she very pointedly does not look at the lines of his throat. God, this is pathetic). “Alright, alright. Let me just put these in the sink.” He takes her glass, and she watches him all the way to the kitchen. Her fingers are buzzing, just a little, where they touched his. The excitement of it all feels very warranted until she remembers she’s a fully grown adult, not a fourteen-year-old with a crush, and a few glasses of red wine should not alter that fact. And _yet._

She goes into the bathroom to brush her teeth and change, and when she comes out, Tim is perched awkwardly on the edge of her bed, hands folded in his lap, still fully dressed. 

Sasha sighs and waves a hand, answers the unasked question. “I don’t know, I didn’t think this far ahead. Get comfortable, I guess. I still have that spare toothbrush, by the way.”

“Right,” he says under his breath, like he’s steeling himself, and he traipses past her into the bathroom, footsteps slightly unsteady but not enough to be worrying. For her part, Sasha gets into bed and tries not to overthink things too much. The alcohol helps with that, but not as much as she wishes it would. 

Still, she must drift off. Not for long, though, because when her eyes open again, it’s to see Tim crawling into bed a bit clumsily, his weight sinking the mattress down at one end.

“I should start keeping clothes here, y’know,” he murmurs to her, still so loud in the dark quiet of the room. He’s just wearing an undershirt and boxers and, again, Sasha elects not to think too hard about any of this. 

“Presumptuous,” she scolds, but it’s cut off by a yawn, and she doesn’t mean it anyway; she hopes he knows that. 

She’s nervous despite herself, a churning feeling in her stomach that won’t let her be. Not because she thinks Tim’s going to do anything weird, even. It’s just that creeping sense of right-wrong, the feeling that all of this could be so normal and everyday, so easy. She doesn’t _want_ to feel like she has to overthink these things. Tim leaving work with her, Tim cooking in the kitchen, Tim laughing on her couch with their legs tangled together, Tim waking her up by accident when he comes to bed. All the trite domestic shit she never thought she would want, not with anybody. 

Sasha’s shaken out of her thoughts by Tim sliding beneath the covers, deliberately curled two feet away from her. As far as he can get without being off the bed entirely. 

“If you’re uncomfortable,” she whispers, “you don’t have to sleep here. I wasn’t trying to pressure you.” 

He rolls to face her, that tension back in his forehead. “I know you weren’t. And you’re not, I just—I don’t want _you_ to be uncomfortable. I know we sort of—” 

“I’m fine,” she tells him, and she means it. Hesitantly, she reaches out a hand to touch his shoulder. “I’m where I want to be.” 

“Okay.” He shuts his eyes. “Thank you, by the way. For—for tonight. All of it.” 

“Tim,” she says softly. He opens his eyes again, wide and dark and vulnerable. “You’re my best friend. It’s not a chore to be around you. I love you. I mean, you know that, right? I don’t—I know I don’t say it enough. But.” 

He smiles at her, weary but still sweet. “Yeah. Right back at you.” 

The gentle surprise on his face makes something inside her ache, but she exhales out a breath of a laugh. “Thanks.” 

His lips twitch sideways ironically. “Anytime.” 

She rubs a thumb over his shoulder, feels the pull of the thin fabric over warm skin and muscle, then pulls her hand away, tucking it back to her chest again. “‘Night, Tim.” 

“‘Night,” he murmurs, and she closes her eyes. 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading!! it occurred to me that this chapter _alone_ nearly as long as my actual timsasha magnum opus, "pyrrhic victory," which is the best fic i've ever written imo. sighs. i really live like this. anyways, next chapter was meant to be at least the length of this one, so it'll probably realistically be double. therefore it'll probably take a while to come out ghslfdkjlsjslj tragically this takes time. ooo and that one'll actually be fake dating the whole way thru as opposed to a brief conversation at the beginning and then 7k of pining angst lmao. i'm planning on sasha pov for that one too, but we'll see how i'm feelin' ig! thank again, hope you're all doing well, and i'm sorry for making a christianity joke


	5. interlude

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein a favor is asked, a necessary discussion is had, and things fall just short of going back to normal. Normal being a relative term, of course.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well. sorry about the loss of the perfect 5+1 format! unfortunately it was a necessary sacrifice to make lol this is 5.2k and it's just teeing up the actual 5th fake dating occurrence! i didn't want to dump a fuckin' 20k chapter on everyone without breaking it up a little bit. so i hope you all enjoy!!

_An Interlude: 14th of May, 2016_

Her first thought when she wakes up to see Tim lying next to her in her bed, snoring softly, is _oh, good. You’re here. Hi._ Her next thought is _oh no, that shouldn’t have been my first thought._

Thankfully, Sasha’s memories and situational context are quick to return to her, the haze of sleep lifted mere seconds after opening her eyes. The mixture of relief and (far more damningly) disappointment she feels then are enough to wake her up the rest of the way. So—nothing happened the previous night. Not that she’d been expecting it to, really, considering where Tim had been at emotionally, and she wouldn’t have wanted it to come out of desperation anyway, but still. He’d allowed her to take him to bed, however innocent the gesture had been, had let her lie next to him the whole night through. The fact that he’d stayed until the morning and was here, safe and warm and peaceful and _natural_ curled beneath her sheets, that was the relief. The disappointment was— 

She shakes herself and rolls out of bed before that train of thought can further derail itself. Breakfast was the first order of business. It’d just be granola and coffee for her, but knowing Tim, he’ll be up and demanding bacon and eggs soon enough. _Or not demanding it, really,_ she amends to herself, but he’ll likely not be at his best considering his tolerance is far lower than hers and they’d had a fair amount of wine last night, so it seems like something he’d want if the alcohol disagreed with him. Anyways, it seems unkind to manhandle him into spending the night at her flat and then not even bother to cook him something decent the next morning. 

She’s certain her hair’s a mess, but she can’t bring herself to care, padding barefoot to the kitchen. The sun is coming in through the tiny window above the sink, bright enough that she has to squint against it, and it’s already warm in the cramped little room even at—she checks the clock on the oven—8:32 AM. Ugh. Her sleep cycle’s so messed up by adult life. She’s almost jealous of her uni self, who was capable of sleeping for sixteen hours straight if need be, to hell with the time of day. Now she’s hard-pressed to get more than eight hours, and she certainly can’t sleep later than nine in the morning. Allegedly, this is healthy. Sasha _hates_ it. 

Flicking on the electric kettle, she tries her best not to overthink the events of the previous night. It’s just that—well, she doesn’t _do_ this. “This” being any of it. She doesn’t share her home with somebody. She invites people over to socialize, sure, but she doesn’t do shit like cook dinner with them, doesn’t crack open her special-occasion wine to make them feel better, doesn’t talk with them for hours about things that don’t matter even a little, doesn’t insist on them sleeping in her bed. Doesn’t try to make them stay. Doesn’t tell them she loves them and certainly doesn’t wake up before them the next morning to make them breakfast. 

Sasha blinks, breathes in and out evenly, and reaches up to get two mugs from the cabinet over the stove. Sets them on the counter. She’s thinking about Tim in the other room, sleeping under her duvet, mouth half-open, hair mussed. She keeps trying to tug her mind away, back to the menial tasks of making coffee and figuring out if the bacon she’s been keeping in her freezer is still edible, but there’s no use. Some part of her is latched onto it like a dog with a goddamn bone, that memory of waking up to his sleeping face. 

It’s not like it’s the first time she’s seen it. Then again, that time she’d left as soon as she was more than half-conscious. Just dressed in silence and walked on out of his flat, staying quiet as she could so he didn’t wake up and know she was going. It had seemed so important at the time, him not noticing. As if he wouldn’t wake up alone and know exactly what it meant. 

Sasha tries not to regret it. That implicit judgment from over a year ago, calculated with a stone sinking low in her stomach: _my job is worth more to me than you are._

She could almost be okay with it. But the answer’s different now. It might have been different even back then.

 _Moot point,_ she reminds herself. He’s not interested, and that’s fine. Good, even. It means she can keep moving forward. 

It’s at that point that Tim wanders into the kitchen, yawning and still soft-looking and sleep-tousled, which is making the “moving forward” thing markedly more difficult. “Hey.” 

“Hey,” she replies. “Coffee?” 

“Yeah, thanks.” He swings himself up onto one of the barstools at her kitchen counter. “Thought you’d run off again.” 

“This is my flat, Tim,” she tells him dryly. “Nowhere for me to run off to.” Now, as ever, it’s easier to joke than to process whatever he’s trying to imply. Sasha has never had the desire to tie herself in knots over emotional subtext, and she’s not about to start now. 

He snorts, glances away. “Guess so.”

“Sleep alright?”

“More or less.” He hesitates, then adds, “No nightmares, if nothing else.”

That statement sits out there in the quiet between them for a few moments before Sasha nods slowly. “That’s, uh—that’s good.” She watches his face, decides not to question him about it further. Progress in small measures is still progress, and she gets the feeling she knows more about this most. Maybe more than anyone at all. 

“...Do you want me to make breakfast?” he asks after a couple seconds. 

She realizes she hasn’t actually moved even though the water in the kettle is boiling. “Oh, uh—no, I’m good. Do you want, like—I think the bacon in my freezer is probably okay to eat.” 

“Okay, that’s not exactly a glowing recommendation. Like, you get that, right?” 

“Oh, you’ll live,” she mutters. “Take the food poisoning like a man. Except you won’t have to! Because the bacon’s edible.” 

“Again, just ‘edible’ isn’t gonna do it for me,” Tim half-says, half-laughs. 

“Your loss.” 

He snaps. “Damn. Guess I’ll eat something that won’t give me food poisoning. I’m really feeling the loss. I can’t believe you’ve done this to me, you know. I thought you _liked_ me.” 

Sasha chuckles. “Well, you’ve been wrong before.” 

“Lies and slander. I’ve never been wrong in my whole life.” 

“Please don’t make me bring up _Antigone_.” 

_“Again?_ Oh my God, Sash, that was ages ago as a _joke,_ let sleeping dogs lie—” 

“Don’t you dare bring dogs into your bullshit. They don’t deserve that.”

He makes a noise of consideration. “You know, I always figured you’d be a cat person?” 

“Who says I’m not?” she asks defensively, crossing her arms. 

“I mean, nobody. _Are_ you a cat person?” 

“Well. No.” 

He spreads his arms victoriously, beaming. “There you go!” 

“Hang on, why are you all smug? You were _wrong._ I like dogs more than cats.” 

“...I think I’ve lost the thread. I have no idea.” 

She grins. “How very characteristic of you.” 

He heaves out a long, sulky sigh. “Listen, I’ve only been awake for, like, five minutes. Go easy on me.” 

“Fine, fine,” she relents, finally bothering to get started on the coffee. “So what do you want for breakfast, if not the bacon?” she calls over her shoulder as she pours the water. 

“Uh, whatever you’re having’s fine.” 

“Seriously, are you alright, Tim? Usually you’d want, I don’t know, something time-consuming and homey, not Greek yoghurt, which I think is the only other thing I’ve got.” 

“What? I’m low-maintenance!” 

“Sure, Tim,” she says dubiously, and he rolls her eyes at her, tapping his fingers restlessly against the granite countertop. 

“Look, I wanna ask a favor, and I feel like strutting into your kitchen and demanding eggs, toast, and bacon is probably a bad place to start.” 

Sasha stops fiddling with the French press and turns to face him fully, leaning back against the counter. “A favor? You didn’t have to keep dancing around it, you know. I’m probably going to say yes.” 

“Yeah, you say that _now._ What if I asked you to hide a body?”

“I mean, alright, I’d have to think about _that_ one first, but I’d probably still do it. Bet it’s not that bad, though.” 

“I—okay, it’s not bad at all, per se, it’s just kind of a big ask.”

“Stop being all weird about it and try me.” 

“Okay, okay! God, you’re insistent.” 

“I’m told it’s one of my better qualities.” 

“By _who?”_

“You, mostly, when it’s not being utilized to your detriment. Just ask the favor, Tim.” 

He sighs, fingers stilling on the countertop. “Alright, look, my cousin’s getting married at the end of July and I need to go with someone.” 

“Okay?” 

“No, like—I need to _go with someone.”_

“...Okay, sure. And you couldn’t find, you know, a legitimate romantic partner to take with you by July? You have enough time.” She can’t help but feel a twinge of regret saying it, but—she wouldn’t be able to walk away from this without feeling like she was taking advantage of Tim if she didn’t let him know he has options other than her. Always has. 

Tim wrinkles his nose. “Kind of a bold move, inviting your partner to a family wedding two months in, if that.” 

“Mm. Fair enough.” 

He looks stressed, and that’s making her more anxious than anything else about the situation is. “Yeah. So, of course you can say no—like I said, I know it’s a big ask, and it’s not like it’s the end of the world for me to go to a wedding alone—” 

Sasha laughs. “It’s not like it’s something we haven’t done before. I guess it’s more extended than our usual fare, but that’s fine—what, do I have to create some crazy alter ego to woo your extended family with? Am I stealing somebody’s identity? Ooh, you know, that could actually be kind of fun—”

“No,” he interrupts, smiling a little despite himself. “Nothing like that. You’d honestly just be you.” 

And that’s—huh. Huh. 

Certainly a thought. 

“Okay,” she says. “Sure. How long are we talking about here?” 

“Not very.” He counts on his fingers. “It’s, uh—I wanna say two days? Like we’d leave the evening before the wedding, be gone that whole day, and then come back around lunch on the next day. But honestly, that last day would be a Friday, so we could probably get away with skiving off the whole day if we just didn’t tell Jon.” 

“I’m sure I could be convinced,” she grins. “What’s the date?” 

“Uh.. hang on, let me grab my phone.” 

“What, you don’t have the date perfectly memorized? For shame.” 

“Oh, please, like you even know _today’s_ date.” Fair point. He plods back toward the bedroom, presumably on the hunt for his phone, so Sasha finishes up the coffee. The idea of breakfast has lost its appeal, honestly—not like she’s lost her appetite or anything, just that she’s got other things to think about now. 

Before now, their whole… thing was something that she could reasonably explain away. If her knee-jerk reaction to an awkward situation was to claim that she was dating Tim, well, sure, why not? It was a solution that had worked in the past, and it continued to work in the present. Really, it was a logical conclusion. A quick little act, easy to assume and easy to shed. Low risk, high reward. This felt different. Inherently. It’s premeditated, she thinks, that’s the thing. It’s not spontaneously making out with your coworker in a bookstore; that’s _normal_ stuff. This is planned. It’ll be extended for a full day, if not longer. And won’t be a character. It’ll just be—her. Except a version of her who has her life figured out enough to actually be with Tim. A version of her who’s in a healthy, comfortable, committed relationship with a man she loves. As opposed to whatever all this is.

God, life is _such_ a bitch sometimes. 

She’s still ruminating on this when Tim shuffles back in, squinting at the screen of his phone (she wonders if he knows he can turn the brightness down). “Wedding’s on the 28th of July, so we get there on the night of the 27th if we leave right after work and get back around lunch on the 29th. Or later, if we so chose.” 

“Yeah, I might so choose. Cool, we can probably get those days off,” Sasha says, pushing his mug across the countertop toward him (the same mug he’s always used, big and traffic-cone-orange, with an ungodly amount of cream and sugar inside. Honestly, Tim, just drink cocoa if you’re that desperate to mask the taste). “So why do you need someone to go with you?” 

Tim blushes, scratches at the back of his neck. “When the RSVPs came, I was still kind of in a relationship with Ryan? It was—look, it was a rare moment of optimism for me, so I checked off that I did indeed have a plus one, and in an even rarer moment of optimism, I sprung for a beachside AirBNB. All very romantic. Then they broke up with me two weeks later, so.”

“Oh, fuck _that.”_

“No, no, don’t be harsh! They were showing restraint, honestly,” Tim half-chuckles. “I genuinely think they were done with me way before that, considering how I—well, anyways, what I’m trying to say is that they probably stuck around because they felt bad about the cottage thing. No refunds. It’s a nice place.”

“Ouch. That’s not a whole lot better, Tim.” 

“Yeah, well. Either way, I already marked down that I was taking a plus one, and I sort of hoped I’d be in a serious enough relationship for that to be, you know, _true_ by the time the wedding actually rolled around, but. Here we are.” 

_Here we are indeed,_ Sasha thinks. “Okay. I’m sure I’ll find a way to suffer through a few days off work in a beachside cottage, far away from most of my coworkers and the worms that plague us day and night. It’ll be a real struggle, but—” 

“Oh, shut up,” he complains, but he’s smiling. “Here I was trying to be considerate, making sure you were comfortable with the—” 

“Yeah, yeah, very gentlemanly. Seriously, though, you could’ve just told your—who was it, your cousin, right?—you could’ve just said you were coming alone. Gotten that whole cottage to yourself.” 

He shifts in his chair, wrapping his hands around the mug even though it’s surely too hot to be comfortably held. “I—alright, fair warning, this is gonna bring down the mood a little—this is kind of the first family event I’ve actually gone to after Danny?” 

The only thing Sasha can think to say to that is “Oh.” That’s, what, almost three years? Feels like a bad idea to say it aloud, but _God._

Tim huffs out a mirthless laugh. “Didn’t really bother for a while, honestly. He and I always went together, you know? Even when we were going with our own people, we were always there together, the two of us. And I didn’t—I couldn’t bear to see how everyone would look at me, knowing that I was just half of a set from here on out.” He forces a rallying grin. “Plus, I figured a new partner would be something nice to talk about. Hell of a lot better than the actual elephant in the room.” Honestly, Sasha thinks on some level that he has to be projecting his self-perception onto his family, but she gets where he’s coming from. “Let ‘em go crazy about something positive.” 

“So you’re throwing me to the wolves?” 

The smile’s back, mostly real. “That’s the plan, more or less.” 

“Wonderful.”

“I thought it was, yeah!” he grins, then goes solemn again. “Like I said, I know it’s kind of a whole… thing. More longevity on the act, definitely, and you’ll be meeting most of my family. Parents, cousins, aunts, uncles, kids-I’m-probably-related-to-but-God-only-knows-how, the whole shebang. It’s not exactly scaring off some guy at Ernie’s.” 

“Tim, I’m sure it’ll be fine. I mean, the way you’re describing it, I’ll just be being me. Except, you know, dating you,” she adds awkwardly. 

“I guess,” he says, laughing a bit. “We’re certainly not inexperienced with that aspect, that’s for sure.” 

She smiles around a sip of coffee. “No, we certainly are not.” 

“Anything I should keep in mind? Dos and don’ts? We haven’t ever been through that before and frankly the fact that I haven’t gotten a chance to ask before now is… uncomfortable to me.” He scratches at the back of his neck, avoids her eyes. He’s not wrong, is the thing. She’d normally insist on this kind of negotiation. It’s just that it hasn’t occurred to her to bring up any complaints with what he does whenever they do this, and—look, the humiliating truth of it is that she’s _fine_ with it, she’s fine with all of it, and when she’s really being honest with herself she _likes_ all of it, wants his awful jokes and gratuitous forehead kisses and arm around her waist almost constantly. 

“Uh…” Every second she spends thinking about this is worse. Even the _don’t slip me tongue_ rule she’d laid down the first time they did this was long since out the window; she’d seen to that one with the bookshop debacle. “I don’t know. Don’t... be mean to me in public?” 

He frowns at her, obviously hurt. “Sash, I wouldn’t do that anyway.” 

“I know. Just… I mean, common sense stuff, right? Nothing gross. Nothing unbelievable. Nothing too PDA-y because it would be both of the things I just mentioned, but I feel like we’ve kind of broken that rule already, so I guess that’s case-by-case. You?” 

Tim snorts. “Fair enough. And… yeah, I guess the same goes for me.” He lets out a breath and takes a sip of coffee. “Cool! Now that we’ve got all the responsible adult stuff worked out, we can go back to what we do best.” 

She cracks a tiny smile. “And what’s that?” 

“Lying to people for fun and profit.” He flashes a bright grin at her, and she grins back, relieved. “So what color dress are you gonna wear? I wanna match the color of my pocket square to it.” 

“Oh my God, Tim, we don’t have to match,” she laughs. “We aren’t fifteen.” 

He lets out a put-upon sigh, smile lingering on his face as he tilts his head. “But Sasha, the _aesthetic._ We have to have _panache._ We can’t just attend the wedding, we have to attend it with _style.”_

“Ugh, fine. I guess it wouldn’t do the act any harm for us to look, I don’t know, together. Visually connected. More believable that way, probably.”

His face shutters off, leaving her wrong-footed for a moment, but then he’s back with barely a missed beat. “Exactly! More believable. See, I have the best ideas.” 

“Mhm. So—cottage by the ocean. Is it a beachside wedding too?” 

“Yeah. Can’t remember the town—oh, don’t look at me like that, I’ll get there eventually—but it’s in July, so I guess it’ll be warm either way.”

“Oh no, there go my plans to wear a fitted black leather suit to your cousin’s wedding,” Sasha says dryly. 

“Well, alright, let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Tim hurries to say, grinning at her in a way that can truly only be described as rakish. 

“I’ll get as ahead of myself as I like,” she scoffs, then focuses back in. “I don’t know, um—what’s the dress code?” 

He shrugs. “Fancy-casual, whatever the hell that’s supposed to be. I took it to mean ‘casual, but the most expensive casual that you own’. They’re that sort. Very influencer-y, very ‘I-woke-up-like-this’. You know the type. I’ll probably just wear a suit anyway; showing up underdressed to your first family event in years feels like poor form.” 

“Ah. Yeah. Okay, I’ve got a green dress, sort of emerald or forest-colored, I guess, that might fit that. Not exactly beach colors, but I know it looks good.”

“Alright, I’ll start combing Amazon for sort of emerald or forest-colored pocket squares,” Tim says, chuckling when she rolls her eyes.

“Knock yourself out,” she mutters, hiding her smile behind another drink of coffee. 

“Oh, c’mon, it’ll be cute,” he whines. “Just admit it’s cute.” 

She heaves a sigh. “Okay, fine, it’s cute.” 

_“Thank_ you. I thought so too,” Tim beams at her, lifting his mug as if to toast her. She stares him down flatly until he sighs and crawls half on top of her counter to stretch over and clink his cup against hers. The stool screeches beneath him. “Cheers,” he says victoriously, taking a long drink of coffee with a flourish right where he’s precariously balanced on the countertop, grinning at her over the rim of the mug. A bit of coffee spills out the side of the cup and lands on his shirt, and he makes a betrayed, plaintive noise when she laughs at him, and she loves him so much it hurts. 

* * *

“So, run it by me again,” Martin says. “You’re doing _what?”_

Sasha bites back a sigh and casts an anxious glance toward Jon’s office, where Tim’s graciously agreed to take one for the team and is now telling Jon that two-thirds of his assistants will be gone for three days straight. “Don’t pretend to be surprised, Martin; I’ve already told you the pretending-to-date act isn't anything out of the ordinary.” 

“Yeah, but this is a different level, Sasha. This isn’t giving Diane gossip fodder at an office party, it’s gleefully lying to Tim’s immediate and extended family,” Martin hisses. _Oh, cool, her name was Diane. Almost got it,_ she thinks with no particular emotion. Maybe resignation. 

“Oh, like you’re morally opposed,” she grumbles.

“Okay, that’s… fair,” Martin concedes reluctantly. “But you have to admit it’s kind of a lot, right?” 

“Yes, I know. I’m the one doing it. I’m fully aware of how much it’s a lot.” 

“So he reciprocates!” He throws up his arms like _and there you have it!_ But, well. Post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy or something. She shouldn’t’ve bothered taking a course on Latin. Or debate, apparently, considering her inability to convince Martin of anything these days. 

“Martin,” she says kindly, placing a hand on his arm. “I know you’re a diehard romantic, and I deeply appreciate that about you.” 

He looks at her, eyebrows raised. “Okay?” 

“No, really! It’s a wonderful trait to have. And you’re a dear friend of mine.” 

“...thanks?” 

“You’re also _completely delusional_ if you think Tim hasn’t managed to get over me in the full year and a half since our one-time-only slightly tipsy hookup. I mean, Christ, I’m a far cry from Tim when it comes to this kind of thing and I don’t think even _I’ve_ ever been interested in somebody that long.” 

He elects to ignore the first half of that statement, folding his arms and shaking her off. “Until now.” 

Sasha sighs, leaning back defeatedly in her office chair. “Until now.” 

“So it’s not that much of a stretch to think that you could be an exception for him too. And this whole endeavor might be an… overture of sorts. He wouldn’t do this with me or Jon, and we’re both friends with him too.” 

“Yeah, but you two don’t have a history of pretending to date him,” she points out.

Martin shrugs and turns back to his computer. “If you don’t want to believe me on this, I don’t think you’re going to, no matter what I say. But you can’t honestly tell me you don’t think this is different than the other times somehow.”

“Ugh,” Sasha mutters, being devoid of a legitimate argument. Martin unsuccessfully attempts to muffle a snort of laughter into his jumper. 

“Seriously, Sasha, I wish you luck. And if you ask me, making a move is definitely the way to go.”

Kindly, she does not say something to the effect of _Offering romantic advice is a bold move for somebody nursing a painfully obvious crush on our boss with no intentions of ever doing anything about it._

Instead, she rolls closer in her office chair to nudge him in the shin with her boot. “I’ll do it if you do it.”

Predictably, he blushes and sort of squeaks. “Sasha!” 

“What?” she grins back at him. It’s nice knowing how to reliably turn the tide of an argument. 

“We are _not_ having this conversation again,” Martin says. 

“What conversation?” Tim asks suddenly from behind her. She jumps so hard that she nearly falls out of her chair, and he catches her with a hand on her shoulder, laughing uproariously. Martin takes this opportunity to turn back to his computer and pretend to be working. 

“Tim!” she snaps. “Don’t startle me like that!” 

“Sorry,” he says, fully unrepentantly. “We’re not having what conversation again?” 

“Well now I’m not telling you,” she says, wheeling her chair back over to her desk, glad for an excuse not to explain. 

He rolls his eyes at her. “Fine, fine, keep your secrets. Doesn’t bother me either way. Oh, yeah, also Jon approved our time off.” 

“With how much complaining?” 

“Probably exactly as much as you think,” Tim grumbles. “I didn’t imagine he’d be thrilled or anything, but _jeez.”_

“Hey, you know what that means?” Sasha says. “Martin’ll be his favorite for once!” 

Martin laughs, taking his eyes off his monitor for the moment. “Not likely, considering how he reamed me out last week for my attempted background work on the David Laylow statement. Key word being _attempted.”_ Tim grimaces sympathetically; he’d been roped into that case to look for Tom Haan after Martin initially failed to find the guy. Jon often insists on either of them helping out Martin whenever a wild goose chase inevitably failed only for them to confirm for him that it was, indeed, a wild goose chase. It was a uniquely miserable waste of time for everyone involved. Jon’s gotten better about it in the recent months, granted, but the continual distrust of Martin’s skills is one that Sasha hopes he gets over sooner rather than later. Sure, he’d been clumsy at first, messing up citations and never really sure where to start when it came to follow-up, but after months of working in the Archives, he’s plenty capable. If Martin says a lead is cold, it’s probably cold. Honestly, it’s admirable how quickly he’s adapted. 

“Who knows? Maybe he’ll come around to you now that Sash and I are abandoning him,” Tim says cheerfully. “A sort of ‘last two men on earth’ situation.” 

“Except instead of epic romance it’s a sense of basic human respect,” Martin mutters. “Great. Glad to know we’re dreaming big here.” 

Against her will, she feels a pang of guilt. “Okay, he respects you already. Sure, he’s a little brusque sometimes, but I honestly think he likes you!” 

Tim stifles a sigh the way he always does when Sasha in particular insists on defending Jon to them, but he still nods firmly. “Trust me, Martin, we know what Jon not liking somebody looks like, and this isn’t it.” 

“I know, I know,” Martin groans. “I just wish he wouldn’t be so… you know.” 

“Yeah,” she admits. “Trust me, I know.” She hesitates. “If you want, I could—try and talk to him? Or just mention offhand—” 

“Oh God, no, please don’t do that,” he pleads. “It’s not that bad. I mean, I—it’s honestly gotten better over the last few months. He actually, um. Smiles at me now? Sometimes? And sometimes we talk when he gets in earlier than you two, and of course I’m already here because, you know, worms. But it’s… nice.” He blushes and turns back to his computer, adjusting his glasses. “Sorry. I, I know I’m rambling.”

Tim grins. “Are you sure you don’t want us to talk to him? I could put in a good word; I’m told I’m a _very_ skilled wingman—” 

Martin flushes even darker, shoulders hunching. “Don’t you _dare—”_

“Lay off him, Tim! Don’t you have some grotesque tooth apple to research?” She whacks him in the arm, and he sighs dramatically, flinging himself into his office chair and rolling back about five feet. 

“Fine, fine! Point taken!” He sniffs and logs in to his computer, very pointedly not looking at either of them. 

Sasha and Martin roll their eyes in unison and get back to work. 

Later that evening, once Martin’s already retreated to Document Storage for the night and Sasha’s starting to pack up and leave, Tim catches her by the arm. “Hey, d’you think I went too hard on Martin today?” 

“What? Oh, no, you’re fine. He’s just, you know, easy to fluster.” Despite herself, something inside her goes warm with fondness at the worry clear on his face. 

He sighs and releases her arm. “Okay. You’re probably right.” 

“Well, when aren’t I?” she grins. 

“Fair enough.” His eyes light up. “Hey, what were you and Martin talking about, really?” 

She freezes, then says, “Oh, just—” she double-checks Jon’s office, but the door is shut tight as per usual. “Work. And his Jon situation.” 

“Ah,” he says knowingly, “of course.”

Sasha swings her messenger bag over her shoulder, and against her better judgement, casually adds, “He was also being all critical about the fake dating thing. Which, c’mon. It’s not _that_ weird.” 

Tim blinks and starts gathering up his stuff as well, cramming assorted papers back into manila folders on his desk. “Yeah, I mean, we’re—we’re cool! We’re just friends, it doesn’t have to be a whole thing. Honestly, between him and Jon—” 

“You told _Jon?”_

“Not today, obviously. Back when we were in research. Remember that night at—I think it was Ernie’s? He was there and afterward he asked me what we were doing. So I told him, and he was weird about it too! Really, they were made for each other.” He shuts off his computer and turns back to her. “Anyway, what’s some fake dating between friends?” 

Nothing at all, apparently. 

“Exactly!” she exclaims (oh, Christ, she hopes she’s imagining how shrill that sounded), beaming. “We’re friends. They just don’t _get_ it.” She can perfectly imagine a slightly younger, less careworn Jon frowning at Tim, wearily befuddled and trying with very little success not to look judgmental. 

“We can’t all be kindred spirits, I suppose,” he says wistfully. 

“People like Jon and Martin are why world peace hasn’t happened yet,” Sasha grumbles, and Tim snorts. Working off some instinct she didn’t even know she had, she opens her mouth to ask _Your place or mine for tonight?_ and then closes it abruptly, because _what?_ That’s not a thing they do; it’s never been a thing they do. She’s not allowed to even want it anymore. She knows that. Tim looks at her curiously as the silence stretches out just a beat too long, and she laughs to fill the quiet, hopefully not too awkwardly. It's—strange. Feeling like, somehow, she's stumbled onstage and doesn't know her lines. She doesn't know what she's supposed to say to make things normal. It's not supposed to feel like that with Tim. 

He raises his eyebrows at her but doesn’t question her about it, just casts a reluctant glance toward the door. “So, uh, see you tomorrow then?” 

“Yeah, see you then.” She sighs, adjusts the strap of her bag, and leaves. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks so much for reading! again, sorry for the weird update. hopefully it was alright anyway! also [@the-ipre](https://the-ipre.tumblr.com/) on tumblr made [this](https://boneroutes.tumblr.com/post/617338442689478656/the-ipre-she-could-see-him-standing-there-in-a) incredible art for ch4 which is!!! aaaaaaa!!!!
> 
> side note i love jon so writing him from the perspective of characters who are less fond? hell. thank u.
> 
> side note 2 because i just noticed: i posted this on the four year anniversary of the events of this chapter. the universe works in mysterious ways 
> 
> next update will be within the next week or so (probably sooner)! thanks again for reading, i've been absolutely blown away by the response to this fic.


	6. says / we are for each other

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tim and Sasha attend a wedding.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i didn't really have any notes planned for this. enjoy, i guess? it's like double the length i anticipated, 16.2k, so settle in with a snack or something. thanks for reading <3

_5\. 28th of July, 2016_

For the next two months or so, things aren’t awkward. 

Things aren’t _not_ awkward either, but Sasha’s doing her level goddamn best to make sure they aren’t _fully_ awkward and it’s working. Mostly. 

She has no idea where the weirdness came from. They’d been fine the morning after she let him stay the night at her flat (or strongarmed him into staying the night at her flat. Whatever. He slept in her bed, that’s the point), and they’d been fine the day following that too. The weirdness snuck up on her slowly enough that she barely noticed until it was far too late to actually do anything about it. She’s bitter about that in particular. Of all things to be a theme in her personal relationships, _too late_ is not one she’d ever wanted. 

She’d thought she was getting over it. She’d thought time was doing its fucking job. But something about the idea of playing this well-trodden role of hers at a _wedding—_

Sasha is not the type to stay stuck for too long. Getting hung up on things doesn’t come naturally to her, but she resists it with all her might, too, in the rare occasion that it does become an issue. When people bullied her in high school, she kept her head low and worked harder and decided it was their fault, not hers. When she didn’t get accepted to Oxford, fine, she went to a polytechnic in Manchester. When she got cheated on and stood up and dumped all through her twenties, sure, that’s just fucking _life_ and it was painful but she dealt with it like any other mundane trauma, the natural bruises incurred by being human and alive. When she was rejected from academic position after academic position, she put in an application at the sketchy paranormal institute in London. When she got passed over for Head Archivist after _years_ of hard work and dedication, okay, that was harder to swallow, but she pushed down her pride and hurt and bitterness and she did the best she could as her friend’s assistant. 

And somehow _this_ is what takes her down? This is what makes her stop and look and think _wait, no, come back_? 

It’s almost insulting. Everything so surmountable except, apparently, affection for Tim Stoker, the aching kind of affection that the word _friend_ can’t quite contain. She managed it for over a year. Waited for it to go away. And it might’ve, but he’s always there, at the office and eating lunch in the canteen and sitting on her couch, and she can’t stop looking at him, and she can’t make the feelings—she doesn’t know. Smaller, she supposes. She can’t hold them in just her hands anymore. 

Obviously their friendship is enough. Anything is enough with Tim. She could be friends with him for the rest of her entire life and be happy, except she would always be thinking _what if?_ and God knows if there’s one thing she can’t abide, it’s a question left unanswered. 

Perhaps, she reflects, trains of thoughts like these are why things are awkward between them. 

Regardless: two and a half months pass. It gets hotter as the stickiness of summer spreads throughout London. The worms become an increasingly common sight around the Institute. Jon gets snappier with them, the pub nights with the Archives crew becoming less and less frequent. The statements begin to put her more and more on edge. She finds herself thinking about Michael again, wondering what exactly he meant by saving Jon, Martin, and Tim. As it turns out, going around in circles about everyone’s fate is vastly preferable to thinking about what the hell’s going on with Tim. 

Because the weirdness isn’t just her. 

Sasha keeps on catching him looking at her. Which isn’t too weird in and of itself, of course—they’re desk partners and therefore have to work in close quarters. It’s only natural that sometimes she glances up to see him already looking back before he blinks and returns his gaze to his computer, clicking away aimlessly at the screen. And yes, it’s probably damning that she’s looking up at him so often in the first place, but that doesn’t negate his strangeness. Even more weirdly, he’s just… stopped working cases with her. Not entirely, no, but he hasn’t shoehorned his way into helping her track someone down or get an obscure piece of evidence since the Harold Silvana statement. She has to ask him now. It’s _weird,_ Tim being all solicitous and quiet and self-contained. 

But it’s also nothing major, and if she brought it up to Martin or—well, come to think of it, she doesn’t have anybody else to talk to about this, so just Martin, really—he’d wave it off as paranoia. He’d probably be right, Sasha decides, and so she tries to ignore how Tim keeps sitting in the same booth with her on pub nights but carefully doesn’t let their arms touch, and still goes over to her flat after work some nights but leaves for his own by the time it’s ten o’clock, and teases her about her organization habits or whatever else she’s doing but like it’s an afterthought rather than an instinct. 

She’s not going to bring it up to him, obviously. It just stays there in the back of her mind, disconcerting and never quite repressible. 

One night, after Jon and Martin have gone home (Jon) and returned to the Archives (Martin), Tim turns to her and says, apropos of nothing, “Hey, you’re still okay with the wedding thing, right?” 

“What?” She hadn’t been paying much attention, but she was fairly certain they’d been sitting in companionable silence before then. She has no idea what warranted the question.

“The, uh, the wedding thing.” He fidgets with the cuff of his shirt where it’s rolled up to his elbow, resolutely not meeting her eyes. “That’s still…?” 

“Of course it is,” she says. “What made you think—?”

“I don’t know,” he says quickly. “Just, you know, checking in. Giving you a chance to bow out gracefully if you’d like.” 

Sasha leans back, raising her eyebrows. “Tim, I’ve committed to the role, and as far as I know you don’t have an understudy.” 

“Now who’s the theatre kid,” he scoffs, and she’d set that one up for him, an easy joke, but the relief that it’s worked and he’s finally looking at her with that normal lighthearted amusement is overwhelming. But his face goes serious again. “Seriously though, it’s alright?”

She sighs, smiling. _“Seriously,_ Tim. If it wasn’t, I’d have told you. Have a little faith in me.” 

“I have all the faith in the world in you, Sasha James,” He props his chin up on his hand and grins at her, and oh, God, they’re reeling right back over into weird because of the way her heart stutters in her chest at the smile, too genuine for her to really deal with right now. 

“I, uh—” she flounders for a joke in the face of it all, can’t find one, and that’s—worrying. “You too,” she finally opts for, then tacks on, “Timothy Stoker.” 

He shakes his head with a quiet laugh. “And why wouldn’t you, really?” 

“I’m sure I could come up with something.” 

“Top Ten Reasons Not To Trust Tim Stoker!” He puts on a radio announcer voice and does jazz hands. Overall, it is disgustingly endearing. 

She recovers quickly. “One: always steals my highlighters. Two: everything about his stupid April Fools’ Day pranks, which never get better no matter how many years I endure them, sorry. Three: has learned how to perfectly forge Elias’ signature for some reason.” With each new point, she holds up a finger. “Four: told me he’d let me pay for drinks tonight and then snuck off to cover the bill himself while I was talking to Jon. Five: spent fifteen whole minutes last week failing to convince Martin that he was a child actor whose fame went to his head, leading to a breakdown in his late teens that made him change his entire career path and go into spooky academia. Six: has somehow managed to successfully rickroll me four times in the scant three years I’ve had his number—” 

Tim laughs, cutting her off, and she lets him, smiling. “Wow, you’ve had that list ready to go, huh? What, you've been practicing in front of your mirror each morning?” 

She snorts. “Yeah, it’s all part of my daily routine. Right after moisturizing.” 

“Well, monologuing about the myriad betrayals of your coworkers _is_ the new skincare fad, so I suppose I don’t blame you.” 

“Finally, somebody who _understands_ me,” she says, flinging out an arm and accidentally whacking him in the shoulder. 

“And this is how you thank me,” he says morosely, rubbing at where she hit him. “I ask you, who’s the real betrayer here?”

“Oh, definitely still you. I’m judge, jury, and executioner here,” Sasha laughs. 

So, no. Not back to normal. But not too weird, either, and things get a little better after that, and then a week later she’s packing her bags the night before they leave for Ilfracombe—a quaint seaside town in North Devon, apparently—and she has no idea how she got here. She folds her dress neatly and lays it down in the suitcase and wonders what the hell she thinks she’s doing. What she could possibly hope to gain. 

She’d seen pictures of the venue when Tim finally remembered to send her the link to its webpage an hour ago, and that, somehow, was what made it all feel real. The photos of the resort tucked away into green cliffs, the pools of clear blue water, waves lapping at a sandy gray shore, the modern architecture and the patio overlooking the sea, happy newlyweds silhouetted against the sunset. It was too easy to imagine herself there with Tim, watching the tide go out as the reception carried on noisily behind them, and it made her stomach flip. 

It’s different. He’d said as much when he asked her to attend with him, had acknowledged that its premeditated nature and extended duration and context set it apart from their other acts. And she’d known he was right. In two days, she’ll be meeting his family and dancing with him in her nicest dress and staying in the same picturesque cottage and trying to—to catch the bouquet at the reception, or whatever. She’d known. But it’s only just now sinking in. It’s different in a way that Sasha’s not sure she can come back from. She has worked too damn hard to keep this friendship since they fucked it up the first time to let it all fall to pieces because of a day and a half in Devon, but here she is anyway. Thinking about it, about _him,_ as much as she may wish otherwise. 

Resolutely, she shakes the thoughts away and zips up her suitcase. She’s fairly sure she’s got everything she needs, and even if she hasn’t, it’s not like they’re going to the middle of the goddamn Sahara; there’s a Tesco like four blocks away at _most_ from where they’re staying. 

Tim really did outdo himself with the cottage. She’d looked at some pictures he messaged her of the AirBNB, and it’s honestly just—absurdly nice. Shingled roof, ivy climbing up the sides, patio with a porch swing, little garden of herbs, a tabby cat that wanders in from the neighboring house enough that it’s basically co-owned. Horseshoe above the door. Hand-painted wooden sign out front reading “Wisteria Cottage”. One bedroom and one queen-sized bed, because of course. 

The first thing she did after seeing _that_ particular tidbit was text Tim and confirm that they weren’t going to make a big deal out of it. Naturally, his first move was to reply “oh shit yeah forgot about that sorry it was a couples cottage which i shouldve told you and i can sleep on the couch ofc”. To which she had (rather reasonably, in her opinion) told him to shut the hell up and they were going to share the bed like two grown adults and it wasn’t like it was something they hadn’t done before anyway. He hadn’t responded for a long time after that, but he did agree.

It’s like all she can think on loop is _this is really happening, huh?_ as if asking it enough times will change the very obvious answer of _yes, and you very much dug your own grave with this one._ Arguably, she’s spent nearly two full years digging this specific grave, which says good things about her commitment if you squint. 

Sasha sighs and sets the suitcase by the door, surveying her flat. She’s lived here for years, and it had always seemed too small, the kitchen uncomfortably cramped and the living room barely large enough for her sofa, two bookshelves, and TV. But now—

Well. There’s too much empty space.

 _Stupid,_ she reprimands herself. _Unhelpful, inconvenient._ Which is true, but also not doing much to stop her. 

Work the next day is fine. It’s just—fine. Jon is vaguely passive-aggressive to them about their “holiday” in the break room while everyone is grabbing lunch, but in the way that suggests he’s not actually _trying_ to be passive-aggressive, it’s just how the words came out, so it’s alright. She intentionally does not meet Martin’s eyes throughout the workday, even as Tim double-checks their plans with her: she’ll go back to her flat after work and get her stuff, where he’ll meet her with the rental car at seven o’clock sharp (but probably a little later because neither of them has an exceptional sense of time, and they’ve come to accept that). From there, they’ll drive to Ilfracombe. Assuming traffic isn’t too bad, they ought to get there around midnight. And that’ll be… that, she supposes. 

Still, she can feel Martin trying to look at her and probably raise an insinuating eyebrow, so she doesn’t give him the satisfaction of acknowledging him at all. Yes, she knows what this looks like. She doesn’t need him to confirm that she is indeed hopeless for Timothy Stoker, even when he’s (mostly jokingly) trying to convince them all to play hide-and-seek in the Archives on the grounds that it’s “basically a Friday anyway” (it is a Wednesday) and they “don’t have anything better to do” (they are so, so swamped). Sasha tries to ignore him, but Jon is comically affronted at the very idea, which of course only fuels Tim’s flame and leads to further playful harassment of their boss. 

But, somehow, she survives until five o’clock with minimal suffering, and then she’s back at her flat, and then all at once she’s buzzing Tim up and he’s fidgeting on her doorstep and pretending he isn’t nervous about the whole affair. She sort of wants to reassure him, but she doubts calling attention to the situation would improve it much, and she’s hardly any better. The irrational fear is always there now, lurking just under the surface: _what if I fuck it up, what if this is the conversation where I say something wrong and ruin it all, what if the drive there is awkward, what if sharing a cottage is awkward, what if the wedding is awkward, what if we’re never quite right again—_

But that’s not a tenable way to live life. So instead, she grins at him and says hello and picks up her luggage, and together they head back down the stairs to where the rental car is—well, _parked_ is probably the wrong word for it, as it turns out. It’s still partially in the street, just angled diagonally toward the sidewalk with the front half jammed into the space between two cars parked outside the building. 

“Oh my God, Tim,” she says, trying and failing to hold back a laugh. “Did you never learn how to parallel park?” 

He blushes. “I—no, okay, listen, I grew up in London, I really only learned how to drive as a formality and I haven’t done it since I was, like, twenty-two—” 

“Are you _sure_ you don’t want me to drive?” 

Tim glares at her, mouth twitching as he tries not to smile. “Oh, just you wait, Ms. James. Soon enough you’ll regret ever underestimating me. We’ll get out on the open road and I’ll be like—like—” He fumbles, hand waving aimlessly. 

“Just admit you don’t know any iconic racers and be done with it,” she grins. 

“...I’ll be like the Fury Road people,” he grumbles mutinously, opening the driver’s side door and flopping down on the seat. “Mad Max or whoever. Or, I don’t know, Lightning McQueen. Kerchow.” 

Sasha snickers, tossing her suitcase in the back and getting into the passenger’s seat. “Maybe not your strongest reference attempt. Stick to your Shakespeare.” 

He sighs, aggrieved, and begins to reverse out of what could charitably be called the parking space. “You know, you complain and complain about my proclivity for the dramatic arts, but when it really comes down to it…” 

“Sure, sure, I’m profoundly charmed by the inherent obnoxiousness and narcissism of theatre. Whatever it takes to get you to shut up.” 

“You know, I was actually in a community theatre company production of _Jesus Christ Superstar_ while I was in uni,” he says casually, almost running a red light but braking in the nick of time.

She opts to ignore their barely-avoided doom. “You were in fucking _what?”_

Any fears of the drive being awkward are alleviated with _that_ little tidbit. He insists all the way out of London that it was the only show he was ever part of, and that his friends at the time had bullied him into it, and he was just ensemble (though he does offer to perform “Gethsemane” for her, which she declines on the grounds that she’d prefer to keep her eardrums intact). 

“You told me for _years_ that you weren’t a theatre kid,” she complains as they finally pass out of the worst of the traffic. “Are you telling me I could’ve been harassing you about it all this time?” 

“Well, I’m _not,”_ he says, all but pouting. “I did _sports_ in school, Sash, I’m a proper jock. One ensemble role as a disciple of Christ when I was twenty and having the first of many minor identity crises does not a theatre kid make. Though I did always sort of _want_ to be one—” 

“I _knew_ it!” Sasha says, vindicated. “For years. You always said you weren’t, but deep down you wanted—”

He raises his voice and continues talking heedlessly. “—I would even argue that I ought to be considered a nerd before I’m considered a theatre kid, if you consider my education and career.” 

“Sorry, Tim, I can’t hear you over the gentle strains of Andrew Lloyd Webber that play in my mind whenever I see your face now,” she singsongs, crossing her arms. 

Tim raises an eyebrow. “The fact that you knew the composer actually says more about you than it does me. Let he who is without sin throw the first stone, I say.” 

“Mm. Fair enough, I suppose, though I can’t exactly help being right all the time. That really was your only dabbling in theatre?” 

_“Yes,”_ he insists. “I just had to read a bunch of plays when I was getting my degree, so of course I remembered some stuff. And you know what? I’m not ashamed of my dalliance in community theatre, Sasha. What you need to do is stop repressing your secret urge to play opposite me in _Much Ado About Nothing,_ and we’ll all be much happier for it.” 

“Pick a better Shakespeare and I’ll consider it,” she mutters. 

“Oh, c’mon, what d’you have against _Much Ado_?” Tim says, rolling his eyes. 

She snorts. “I haven’t read it, but his comedies are by _far_ the worst of his plays.” 

“They’re brilliant!” he exclaims defensively, almost steering them off the M3 as he turns his head to gape at her. 

“Keep your eyes on the road,” she yelps, grabbing for the steering wheel to keep them steady, ignoring his laughter. “And yeah, you _would_ think that, wouldn’t you?” she continues when they’re once again driving in a mostly straight line.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” 

“Oh, I don’t know.” She taps her fingers against the side of the door. “They’re just—ugh, I don’t know. They just get tied up so neatly at the end! Like, what, I’m just supposed to believe everybody’s happy at the end of _Twelfth Night_ ? Olivia’s married a man she doesn’t even know in a case of mistaken identity, Sebastian’s just going along with the weird mess his life’s become, I guess, Orsino’s rebounded onto Viola since Olivia’s clearly no longer an option, and Viola’s—well, Viola’s probably fine, actually, seeing as she got Orsino like she wanted. And that’s not even getting _started_ on the latent homoeroticism with almost all of the main characters which makes me pretty sure they’re not even _remotely_ with the people they wanted t—”

Tim laughs. “You can just say you don’t like _Twelfth Night,_ you know; I’m not passing judgement. All I’m saying is that you might actually enjoy _Much Ado."_

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” she grumbles petulantly. “And I don’t have plans to go to the Globe anytime soon.” Tim rolls his eyes at her, but she’s fairly sure it’s more out of fondness than anything else, considering the tiny smile tugging at the edges of his lips. 

He’s not looking at her anymore, having elected to devote his full attention to driving for maybe the first time in the hour they’ve been in the car together. The sun’s starting to go down outside their little Toyota Camry, turning the sky hazy shades of pinkish-orange, now that they’re starting to leave the smog of the city behind. Tim’s features are lit up a burnished gold, outlined by the blaze of the summer sun, and it’s almost dizzying to look at him. It’s a foreign feeling. She doesn’t go for people in this way; she’s never believed somebody was beautiful enough that just sight of them, stunning and real and tangible, was a punch to the gut. She looks at him just like this, just driving and drumming his fingertips against the steering wheel, and she can feel the bottom of her stomach drop out. He’s almost statuesque, like the gilded metal sculptures they put in museums; look but don’t touch. She wants to, though. Touch.

 _This,_ Sasha thinks, _is going to be a long couple of days._

“So, what’s the deal with Ilfracombe?” she asks after about fifteen minutes of comfortable quiet, both of them just listening to the ‘90s throwback station turned down low (and boy was it a kick in the teeth to hear the announcer refer to the music she’d heard when she was twelve as “oldies”). 

He chuckles, but, to his credit, he doesn’t take his eyes off the road this time to look at her. “What do you mean ‘what’s the deal’ with it?” 

“Well, what do people do there?” 

Tim shrugs. “I dunno. I mean, it’s a seaside town. I think there’s a statue somewhere.” 

“Mm. Thrilling,” she deadpans. 

“No need to be all mean; we don’t have to go see the statue if you don’t want to!” he says defensively. 

“I’m not being mean!” she protests. “All I’m saying is that you could probably sell it better than ‘there’s a statue somewhere’.” 

“Nothing but criticisms from you this whole drive,” he complains. “Weren’t you ever told that if you don’t have anything nice to say, you shouldn’t say anything at all?” 

“Sure, but I’ve elected to ignore that. So have most people in the world, as you may have noticed.” 

“Well, what can I say. I’ve always been a rebel. Always gone against the grain. Join me in the revolution, Sasha!” He speeds up out of excitement as his voice gets louder, probably unintentionally. 

Sasha can’t hold back the smile in her voice. “Fine, fine, I’ll be more pleasant. Watch the speedometer, loyal comrade.” 

He curses under his breath and slows down, grinning. “Sorry. Got into it a little.” 

She snorts. “I could tell.” _It was sweet,_ she almost adds, but she thinks better of it. Obviously. 

“You always were observant,” he says dryly. “Anyways, Ilfracombe. There are pubs, probably. Ooh, the South West Coast Path passes through there so we could go hiking through the cliffs on—I don’t know, maybe the morning of the wedding? On the 29th, we already have to leave pretty early to get back before lunch ends.”

Sasha wrinkles her nose. “Feels like we’re pushing it either way. I feel like it would be worse to be late for your cousin’s wedding than for another one of Jon’s spooky tape recorder sessions.” 

“Ah, you’re probably right. Whatever. Like I said, I don’t think it’ll really be all that bad if we ‘accidentally’ miss all of work on Friday, but if you’re _so_ desperate to get back—” 

“I could… probably be convinced,” she admits.

He shoots her a grin. “I’ve been told I’m very convincing.” 

“And so modest, too,” she remarks wryly. 

He laughs. “Point taken, though, for the record, I _am._ And regardless: there’s no way I’m going back to the Archives after this wedding even for a half-day. We’ll have earned a weekend to recuperate, trust me. My family can be… a lot.” 

“How so?” 

Tim waves a hand dismissively. “Probably whatever you’re imagining, to be honest. Typical big family, everyone very overprotective and emotional and loud. Shouty. Argumentative, but if we’re lucky they’ll tone it down, what with it being a wedding and all. Wouldn’t bet on it, though.” 

“Ah,” she says. “Right.” She doesn’t really grasp all this, being from a small family. Well, it’s probably an average size in reality, but her immediate family was never particularly close to her other relatives, and everyone lived far enough apart that a reunion never quite felt worth it except for when her great-grandfather turned 100 and they all had to make their way out to Liverpool and pretend to care about each other. The warmth in his voice is totally incongruous with her experience with familial relationships, but she nods knowingly anyway. 

He nods too, half to himself. “It’ll be fine. They’ll swarm us a bit, but hopefully most of the focus will be on Lee and Mira.” 

“Oh, yeah. We should probably be telling consistent lies since this is going to last for several hours and we can’t be attached at the hip the whole time. When’d we get together?” 

“Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten our anniversary already!” 

“Shut up, Tim,” she says absentmindedly, already focused on the role. “Let’s say it was a month or two after we got transferred to the Archives, so like… a year and a month, give or take. That way it’s obvious that it’s a serious relationship, the sort of partner you’d bring to a family wedding, but it won’t be too weird when you go to the next reunion without me.” 

“Without—?” Then he laughs, shaking his head. “Ah, right. Yeah. That makes sense.” 

“Yeah, I thought it did. Er… let’s say we live together, just for the sake of ease.” 

“Ooh, whose flat did we move into?” 

“Oh, mine, obviously,” she scoffs. “My oven actually works. And the pipes don’t squeal whenever you turn on the shower.” 

“Mm, fair point. My flat’s bigger, though.” 

“Sorry, babe, you’re just gonna have to take that bullet for the good of the relationship.” 

Tim shoots her an amused look. “‘Babe’?” _Oh, whoops,_ some part of her notes helpfully.

Sasha flushes. “I—okay, look, we have to get used to—to playing the roles, right? No harm in—” 

“Yeah, sure, can’t argue with that,” and it’s hard to tell now that the dusk is giving way to night, but she would swear he’s blushing just a little. “What pet names do we use? Darling? Dearest? Sweetheart? Love? Honey?” 

Oh, Christ, her heart’s fucking _fluttering_ at the stupid endearments; this is the worst thing that’s ever happened to her. “I don’t know! Whatever sounds natural, I guess!”

“What, bumblebee’s off the table? I can’t call you my better half? Doll? Sunshine? Sweetest song I’ve ever heard? Starling?” 

She laughs in spite of herself. “Starling? Where the hell did that come from?”

“First bird I thought of. Or, okay, grackle actually was, but that didn’t seem romantic enough—” 

“You think _starling’s_ romantic?” 

He gasps in mock offense. “You _don’t?_ Sash, I’m appalled. I don’t think this fake relationship can work after all, our values are just too different—” 

Sasha holds up her hands in surrender. “Sorry, sorry, call me whatever bird you want!” 

“Bird name or not, starling’s a good endearment and I stand by that,” he grumbles. 

“You might be right—” she concedes, grinning. 

He throws up an arm in triumph, keeping a hand on the wheel. _“Thank_ you! I’m glad you’ve finally seen the light, my sweetest starling—”

“—Oooh, yeah, babe, talk _birdy_ to me.” 

There is a very long beat of silence, then Tim groans and thunks his head twice against the steering wheel. “Please just put me out of my misery.” 

“Keep fucking _driving,_ Tim!” 

“So demanding,” he complains, lifting his head up and jerking the wheel so they don’t run anybody off the road. 

“You’re going to get us killed, I swear to God,” she mutters. 

“I can drive! In fact, if you’ll notice, we haven’t died _once_ this entire trip.” 

“Fantastic,” she says. “I’m so glad that’s the only criterion I’m allowed.” 

“Well, keep it simple, I always say.” 

“Mm. Simple sounds about right for you.” 

“Ouch. Vicious.” 

“Never claimed to be otherwise,” she reminds him with a smile, leaning back and putting her feet up on the dashboard. He rolls his eyes like he might scold her for it, but that would be so hilariously hypocritical that he seems to realize it and think better of it.

Somehow, despite Tim’s dubious driving ability, they manage to arrive in Ilfracombe just after midnight. It’s subdued in comparison to London, narrow streets and fewer cars and almost no people on the streets, especially since it’s later at night. From there, it’s just trying to get Google Maps to work long enough for them to navigate their way to the cottage. The town is boxed in on both sides by cliffs, making the roads cramped and winding, so the navigator keeps getting confused, but eventually, by sheer dumb luck alone, Sasha spots the address as they’re driving past yet another row of perfect houses, and Tim swerves precariously into the private parking space promised by the AirBNB page, and then they’re there. 

Wisteria Cottage is exactly as idyllic as promised on the website, which feels like it shouldn’t be allowed. It’s hard to make everything out in the dark, but there’s the pale cream exterior, climbing vines, porch swing, hand-painted sign, et cetera et cetera. _Nothing_ should be as advertised, and yet. 

Tim lets out a low, appreciative whistle at the cottage as he gets out of the car. “I did good!” 

“Yes, it’s all very romantic,” she agrees dryly, heaving her suitcase out of the back of the car. “Are you going to get your stuff, or…?” 

“Be patient,” he chides her. “Can a man not revel in his triumphs?” 

“When the triumph is successfully renting a place to stay for two nights? Not for any longer than five seconds, which I believe we’ve surpassed.” 

“Fine, fine! But I _did_ do good. Look, there’s a view of the sea and everything. There’s a porch swing, Sash,” he beams, grabbing his bags. “And a cat! Though I don’t see him now. Maybe he’ll show up tomorrow. I don’t remember his name, or I’d call to him…” He continues rambling as he looks for the key (hidden under one of the ceramic flowerpots by the door) and unlocks the cottage, and Sasha lets his talking fade into the background noises of the infrequent cars passing by, faint music from one of the pubs down the road, the sounds of insects. Not tuning him out, exactly—just focusing on everything else equally. The calming effect is distantly surprising. From here, she can smell the ocean. 

“Hey,” Tim says, gently touching her upper arm. “You alright?” 

Sasha can’t stop herself from jumping a bit in surprise. “Oh—yeah, sorry. I didn’t mean to zone out, I just…” 

“Yeah,” he agrees, and she wonders if he really understands or is just trying to. 

She thinks maybe it doesn’t matter. It’s still nice. “Just different from the city, that’s all,” she ends up saying, and she carries her luggage inside. It’s late enough that she doesn’t feel all that interested in exploring the few rooms of the cottage, so she just makes a beeline for the bedroom and tosses her suitcase down in one of the corners. Tim comes in soon after and sets down his bags. And here’s the moment she’d been afraid of: the two of them on either side of one bed, thinking _well, now what?_

“You know, I’m not actually tired yet,” Tim finally says. “I thought I would be after driving that long.” 

“I’m not tired either,” she says. Tries to keep the uncertainty out of her tone. 

“Wanna sit outside for a while?” He’s got his hands crammed into the pockets of his jeans, a stance so uncomfortable it looks nearly alien on him. 

“Yeah,” she replies, because she realizes she actually does, so they head back out into the night again, Tim locking the car almost as an afterthought. In silent agreement, they both sit down on the advertised porch swing, a sun-bleached wooden bench suspended over the brick patio of the cottage. After a moment of hesitation, she leans against Tim’s side. Slowly. _If he wants to move, he can,_ she tells herself over and over. The air is balmy, nothing that warrants the sharing of body heat, but she can’t bring herself to care, not now. It feels acceptable, here in the quiet dark of this town, so far away from their real lives. _Would it be so wrong?_ she thinks, though she couldn’t say what _it_ was for the life of her. 

Minutes pass. Tim wraps an arm around her shoulder. Neither of them talks. It’s a strange thing, their silences. She feels so tightly wired, can sense the tension between them crackling in the still air, but at the same time, it’s the calmest she’s ever been. His presence alone is miraculously steadying, but she’s thrown off balance every time regardless. 

“You can see the stars out here,” Tim whispers, voice soft and right next to her ear. She can; she stops staring out into the darkness straight ahead and instead looks up into the dizzying night, scattered across with stars. “I always forget how many there are, living in London.” 

“You should leave the city more often,” Sasha tells him just as quietly. “It’s good out here.” 

He laughs, barely more than a breath. “I did. I do. I mean, I used to more often. Before, you know. But I like it out here. Hiking, kayaking, rock climbing, bicycling, whatever. Anything moving and outside. Somewhere that I can feel the sun. I try to do it whenever I have time off work. You?”

“Grew up in a town like this,” she says. “Not exactly the wilderness, but we could see some constellations. We could hear the frogs at night during the wet season; we lived by the river.” 

“Sounds nice.” 

“It was. I miss it, sort of. I didn’t think I would.” She chuckles, shakes her head. “I was so desperate to get out of that town, you know? I guess that’s how it is when you’re a kid. And I’m glad I did, but. It’s hard not to miss that—you know. Seeing all sorts of birds. Hearing insects every hour of the day in the summer. Being able to pick out a couple constellations.” 

“Do you remember any?” His fingers are unconsciously tracing some aimless pattern against her arm, up and down, and she tries not to shiver at the touch. 

“Any what?” 

“Constellations.” 

“Ah. Not really. I wasn’t much good at that. Stars just look like stars to me. Annoyed the hell out of my dad, that. He wanted to teach me the constellations, have the cinematic father-daughter bonding moment, but I could never connect the dots in the right way. I mean, I can find the North Star and the Big Dipper; I’m not totally daft. I could probably figure out which arbitrary straight line of three stars is actually Orion’s Belt. D’you know any constellations?” 

Tim laughs. “No. I haven’t spent much time looking at the stars, living in London and that. Never even seen a meteor shower.” 

She cranes her neck back to look at him incredulously. “Never?” 

“Never! I went my whole childhood without ever wishing on a falling star!” 

“What an empty husk of a life you must lead. Listen, the Perseids meteor shower happens every year in the middle of August—we should see if we can get out of the city again in a few weeks. We’ll, I don’t know, find some place to go camping out far away from the lights and smog and stuff, and we’ll find you a fucking star to wish on, because that’s just _sad,_ Tim.” 

It’s hard to tell in the dim light—her eyes haven’t really adjusted to the darkness outside the cottage yet—but she thinks he’s smiling. “After already missing two days of work this month? Jon’s going to chain us to our desks, Sash; we’re not going anywhere.” 

“Ugh, you pessimist. That’s fine, we’ll rope him in—Martin as well. It’ll build camaraderie. We can pitch it to Elias as soon as we get back, I’m sure he’ll love it. Call it team-building. We’ll get some sleeping bags, some drinks, some firewood—” 

“And then we’ll all sing ‘Kumbaya’ around the campfire and be best friends, sure,” Tim grins. 

“Sounds quite touching, if you ask me.” She lets her head tip against his shoulder, and for a moment he tenses, but he relaxes so quickly she’s left wondering if she imagined it after all. 

“Yeah, I’ll break out my guitar and lead everyone in song.” 

Sasha lifts her head again, raising her eyebrows. “You play guitar? How did I not know this?” 

“Yyyyyep. I was quite the stereotype in uni, you know. People thought guitarists were hot, and I liked music, so I figured why not? Might as well pick up a new skill. I didn’t stick with it as much as I wish I did now, but I really enjoyed it. I’d never seriously played an instrument before then, and there’s something unique about creating music with your own hands. It was just... Special, in a way I wasn’t expecting.”

She nods, lets that unexpected sentimentality sink in. “...did you know ‘Wonderwall’?” 

Tim snorts. “I was a mediocre 20-year-old guitarist. Of _course_ I knew ‘Wonderwall’. But d’you know what?” 

“What?” she grins. 

“‘Wonderwall’ is good, actually.” 

“What are you _talking_ about?” 

He makes a noise of distress next to her. “It’s _good!_ It’s a genuinely sweet sentiment, and it’s catchy, and it’s just—” 

“If you can tell me what the hell a wonderwall actually is, I _might_ let this slide—” 

“You don’t _have_ to know what a wonderwall is! It doesn’t matter! It’s about love and friendship and—” 

“Oh my God, did you do a comprehensive analysis of the lyrics or something?” she laughs. “You’re in too deep, Tim.” 

“I think I’m in just the right amount. But fine, I’ll keep my opinions on Oasis’ discography to myself if you insist.” 

“And I do,” Sasha confirms, dropping her head back down to his shoulder. The silence returns, but this time there’s less of that tension, the aimless urgency to do—something. God knows what. There’s no drive, no burn beneath her skin. It’s odd to feel so fully present in a moment. So fully inside herself. The slight creak of the old wooden porch swing as Tim slowly rocks it back and forth, every inch of his body where it’s pressed alongside hers, the almost undetectable stirring of his breath in her hair, the warmth of the July night around them, the crashing of waves in the distance if she strains her ears enough, the hush of cars on the A361 just a few miles away, the stiffness in her joints from staying nearly motionless for too long, the buzz and click of insects. 

His face tilts sideways until she can feel his cheek against the top of her head. The movement is slow, deliberately so, like he’s giving her time to shift positions, so she stays as still as she can until he comes to rest there. 

It aches. All of it does. Not in her chest like she thought this kind of helpless, hopeless want might, but in her hands and shoulders and teeth or maybe somewhere deeper, somewhere she didn’t know even existed before now. They’re curled in together, both looking up at the stars maybe just so that they don’t have to look at each other. Sasha wonders what would happen if she did, if she turned her head and met his gaze and asked him what they were doing here. What they were _really_ doing. 

But she’s not going to do that. She knows she’s not. She can’t. Instead, she tucks her head into his neck and breathes evenly and tries to find the lines between the stars. 

Eventually, Tim squeezes her shoulder gently and lifts his head. “We should probably go to bed,” he says, barely louder than a breath.

“Yeah,” she whispers. “My neck’s going to be so goddamn cramped tomorrow.” 

He grimaces. “Yep. I think my bones are crying for mercy already.” Sighing, he disentangles the two of them, stands, and offers her his hand. She takes it, and they go inside. 

They move through the rituals of getting ready to sleep around each other, and Sasha tries not to overthink each semi-automatic motion. It’s not much different from doing it alone, after all; she just has to account for Tim being next to her brushing his teeth and moisturizing and such. _Don’t think about how natural it feels,_ she repeats to herself over and over. _Stop it. Shut up._

She can’t hide behind tipsiness now, that’s the thing. She’s stone-cold sober when she pulls back the light duvet and slides under it and Tim follows a few seconds later. They’re both lying on their backs staring at the ceiling and that’s not even slightly natural. Which is better. Worse. Both. 

“Let’s not be weird about it,” Tim says aloud, rolling to face her, and she’s both apprehensive and incredibly relieved. 

“We’re not being weird about anything,” she replies, turning to look at him as well. “This is all very normal.” 

He huffs out a noise adjacent to laughter, eyes closing. “Exactly. It would be weird to be weird.” 

_Just friends, just friends, just friends,_ she chants in her head. “Well, let’s not be weird, then.” The conversation is disconcertingly familiar. 

“That’s what I just said,” he murmurs, eyes remaining shut. They’re only inches apart, here underneath the same blanket in the same bed. It would be so easy to cross that distance, maybe put a hand on his arm or return to her earlier position with her head beneath his chin. Yes, mechanically easy, but getting past the emotions knotted up there, the implications, the unspoken promises, that was— 

Sasha closes her eyes too, if only so she’ll stop looking at how his eyelashes fall against his cheeks and the tiny upturn of his lips. There’s a vulnerability to this, she thinks, the choice to close your eyes in the presence of somebody else. Some small remnant of your animal brain on edge screaming that you are open to attack in this unknowing dark, and you deciding you are safe nonetheless. That you will not be hurt here. 

She listens to him breathing, and she allows herself to drift away. 

* * *

Sasha wakes up in the middle of the night uncomfortably warm. She comes into consciousness so incrementally that it doesn’t strike her as strange, but once she’s fully aware of her surroundings it’s definitely odd. It only takes her a moment to figure out why. No great mystery: at some point, Tim must have unconsciously crossed those few inches and tangled them up together. His arms are firmly wrapped around her waist, his forehead buried against her neck. She’s holding him too, she realizes, an arm slung over his shoulders despite the heat. It’s an unsettling thing to wake up to, but she doesn’t move. 

All of it is so quietly overwhelming that for a moment the only thing she can do is lie there, staring at the white curtains covering the window on the other side of the room. Of course this would happen. Tim has his own goddamn gravitational pull; it was only natural that she would end up like this, clinging to him as if she needs any of the extra warmth in the summer night. 

She hasn’t moved yet. 

There are plenty of viable reasons for this: she doesn’t want to disturb Tim’s sleep, she doesn’t want the conversation that would be sure to follow, she doesn’t want to go to the trouble of trying to ease herself out of his arms slowly enough that those other two things don’t happen. However, none of that is actually why she hasn’t so much as shifted since she woke up. It’s only like this, in the dark with her hand resting on the bare skin of his upper arm where the sleeve of his t-shirt’s been shoved up and his hair brushing her chin, that she can admit to herself that she is still here only because she wants to be. Staying here is an active choice and she keeps making it. Even though it’s horrifically sweaty. 

Sasha continues to make that choice. She does so until her eyes fall shut again and her awareness fades back out into a haze and then nothing at all. 

* * *

When she next opens her eyes, it’s to an empty bed. 

For a moment, that does legitimately hurt. The space next to her is cold and the duvet has been carefully tucked back around her. It looks, for all intents and purposes, as if nobody was ever there with her at all. 

Then Sasha remembers that she’s done this to Tim multiple times and feels better. Also worse. She contains multitudes. 

Sighing, she throws back the cover and slides out of bed. Tim’s in the kitchen digging through the cabinets, hair already schooled into its usual artfully tousled mess even though he’s still wearing what he’d slept in, gym shorts and t-shirt advertising some charity run.

“‘Morning.”

He turns to beam at her, no trace of discomfort or awkwardness at all, and she relaxes minutely. “‘Morning. Sleep alright?” 

“Yeah, I guess,” she says. Considers her options, then adds with absolutely no inflection, “Kind of hot in that room, wasn’t it?” 

Ah, there’s the tenseness. “Mm. Yeah, I guess.” He doesn’t say anything else. 

Sasha shrugs and heads straight for the coffeemaker. “We’ll just sleep without blankets tonight.” 

Tim laughs a little, maybe incredulous, maybe relieved; either way she’s not examining it too closely. “Cool.” 

In the ensuing silence, she waits for the water to heat up and surveys the cottage. They hadn’t done much looking around the interior when they’d arrived the previous night. It’s nice. White-tiled kitchen with a teal backsplash, inoffensive blue and seafoam walls, impressionist paintings of flowers, wooden furniture all the same teak color. 

He clears his throat. “So, uh—there’s a cafe a few minutes’ walk from here if we wanted to get lunch before the wedding. We have to arrive at around 1:45, so I figured we could head to the cafe around noon, grab something to eat, wander around the city center, then head to the venue.” 

She checks the time—8:28. “Sounds good to me. What d’you want to do in the meantime?” Picks a pod for the coffee machine, just straight black coffee, and watches the steaming, dark liquid pool at the bottom of the mug. 

Tim hums in consideration, reaching around her to pull another mug down from the shelf and rummaging through the coffee pods in the bowl by the machine. “I think they’ve got some board games stored under one of the sofas. There’s a pack of cards on one of the bookshelves too.” 

“Is there a cribbage board?” 

“What are you, seventy?” 

“Oh, we’re criticizing me for my taste in board games now? Is that what we’re doing?” 

“Alright, alright, jeez!” he surrenders, throwing his hands up like _don’t shoot!_ “Would kicking my ass at Scrabble make you feel better?” 

She allows herself a grin. “...maybe. It would certainly be a good start.” 

“A good _start,”_ he groans. “What more do you want from me?” 

“I’ll let you figure it out. Be a self-starter! Show some initiative!” 

“Are all your performance reviews this vague?” 

She snorts. “See? I wouldn’t’ve made such a good boss anyway.” 

Tim doesn’t even bother to refute her, just rolls his eyes and pushes her now-full mug of coffee toward her. “Oh, shut up, we’re not having this argument again. Honestly, at this point it’s barely even an argument, it’s a moot point that we keep going back to anyway for some reason—” 

_“Tim.”_

_“Sasha,”_ he singsongs back, putting his own pod into the machine. “Look, all I’m saying is that you were robbed. We can at least agree on that much.” 

“Yes, but it’s not like I can _do_ anything about it,” she says tersely. “Listen, Tim, can we not talk about this right now?” 

He exhales loudly, scrubbing at his eyes with the heel of his hands. “Yeah, of course. Sorry.” 

“It’s fine,” she says. “I mean, I appreciate it, but—” 

“But it’s done.” 

“Yeah.” She sighs. “You can stop trying to hate Jon about it now.” 

He scoffs. “I wasn’t _trying to hate him.”_

“It was very sweet of you to make the attempt.” 

“Okay, but he _has_ been kind of a dick recently. For all you know, this might have nothing to do with you getting passed over for a job that you _obviously_ should have gotten—” He cuts himself off when he sees the look on her face and shrugs sheepishly. 

Sasha huffs a laugh. “Dick or not, you still like him.” 

“Yeah,” he admits. Raps his knuckles against the counter and sighs. “Yeah.” 

“It’s not a bad thing; he’s our friend,” she says matter-of-factly. “C’mon, you said they had Scrabble, right?” 

Tim physically shakes himself out of any lingering seriousness and shoots her a grateful smile. “I think it’s Upwords, but yeah. Same thing, right?” 

“Oh my God, Tim, _no._ The strategies are totally different; they aren’t even comparable as games! Don’t slander the good name of Scrabble.” 

“What did Upwords ever do to you?” he chuckles, taking a sip of his coffee (chai latte, according to the pod, which hardly counts, but Sasha’s choosing not to mock him for it just this once). 

She crosses her arms. “Nothing. I just think if I have to memorize that many two-letter words to win a board game, maybe something about it needs to be fixed.” 

“Okay, strong opinions about word games. Noted,” Tim remarks, wandering over into the living room. “Do I even _want_ to know your thoughts on the Words With Friends app?”

“Don’t get me started,” she grumbles, following him in. He’s rummaging around under the sofa already. “The board layout’s all wrong, it ruins everything good about Scrabble, and—” 

“Oooo, they’ve got Monopoly!” he exclaims, pulling the cardboard box out and displaying it. 

“Do we have time for that?” she asks, sitting cross-legged on the carpet next to him. 

He shrugs. “Don’t know. We can always pick it back up later.” 

“Tim, we’ll be out past midnight tonight and we go home tomorrow,” she reminds him.

“Right,” he says, blinking as if startled. “Well, I’ll just have to beat you quickly.” 

She makes a face. “Ugh. Can’t we just do Upwords?” 

“Sashaaaaaaa, I don’t want to play smart people games.”

“Fine, I’ll lose to you at Monopoly. You owe me one, though.”

He pumps his fist and starts setting up the game. “And when don’t I, honestly?” he adds.

“Yeah, you’re gonna have to start delivering at some point,” she grins, and he snorts. He doesn’t have anything to deliver on, of course. Neither of them does. She figures that’s kind of the point of being friends—at a certain point, you stop keeping count of who owes who. 

Predictably, Tim gets a few good rolls in early on and manages to snatch up Boardwalk his second time around the board and Park Place on his third. In most cases, Sasha would insist that you can’t be certain of a winner until more properties have been claimed, but Tim’s got an absurd amount of luck with these things, so she knows she’s a goner about fifteen minutes in and can therefore let go of her usual competitive instinct. 

It’s more fun that way anyway, she’s discovering. There’s far less bickering about his bullshit house rules when she knows she’s already lost, so she just takes to throwing the pieces they’re not using at him whenever he makes up some other lie on the spot about why he _doesn’t_ actually have to pay when he lands on her properties. He’s not a very convincing cheater, but she indulges him anyway because of how he grins whenever she lets him get away with it. 

“Just you wait til I finally get you to play Scrabble with me,” she says darkly. “There’ll be no cheating then. Just the cold hard truth.” 

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he somehow manages to say with a straight face. Truly, no justice. 

Despite the fact that he’s clearly going to win, the game gets drawn out until Sasha thinks to check the time and finds that it’s already 11:45, and then it’s all a scramble to get ready quickly so they’ll still have time to eat before the ceremony. Not that there’s much she has to do, as it turns out—she’s never been one for elaborate makeup, doesn’t like how it changes her face even when it’s well-applied—beyond the usual morning routine and then putting on a prettier dress than usual. 

Tim doesn’t take long either; by 12:05 they’re just putting on the finishing touches in front of the bathroom mirror. Even she has to admit she looks good. Dark green’s always been nice on her, although she tends to wear warmer autumnal colors, and the dress fits perfectly (which is a goddamn miracle in itself, considering she ordered it online two years ago on a whim). 

But of course it’s not just the dress that keeps dragging her eyes back to her reflection because nothing can be simple. It’s both of them standing side by side in the mirror. They look like a couple. They look _good._ She can see the two of them from an outsider’s perspective like this, and they’re nothing if not a striking pair, both of them tall (though she’s taller than him with the heels, which she loves) and beautiful and almost regal if you could look past Tim struggling with his tie. 

“This is getting sort of sad,” she remarks dryly after watching him wrestle with it for upwards of a full minute. 

“Fuck off,” he says amiably. “There _is_ a reason I don’t wear ties to work, you know.” 

“Yeah, clearly. Seriously, you can’t do a basic Windsor knot?”

“I’m a grown man, Sash. Of course I can tie a Windsor. But where’s the flair? The fashion? The intrigue? I’m trying to do a Pratt knot, for the record. From memory. You’d be struggling too.” 

“Google exists,” she points out. 

“Mm. The coward’s way out.” 

“Oh, _now_ you’re a man of honor? After all your Monopoly crimes?” she laughs. “C’mon, Tim, we have to go.” 

“Let me keep trying,” he pleads, fumbling the tie once again. 

She rolls her eyes and, on an impulse, tugs it out of his hands. “Honestly,” she mutters. “Do I have to do everything around here?” She loops it around his neck and starts to tie a simple Four-in-Hand knot before her brain catches up to what the rest of her is doing and the near-automatic hand movements stutter because Tim is _right there,_ looking at her weirdly with the little half-smile that she has _feelings_ about. 

“Not easy doing it from memory, is it?” he says archly after a few breathless seconds, and Sasha scoffs and turns away. 

“Please. I’ve been tying ties since I was sixteen.” 

“What for?” 

She finishes the knot and straightens the tie on his chest, fixing his collar and guiltily letting her fingers brush against the side of his neck before smoothing down the lapels of his jacket. “Got tired of wearing dresses all the time. What happened to the matching plan?” 

“Oh, ye of little faith,” Tim says. “Look at the tie in the light.” 

With a start, she pulls her hands away and steps out of the way of the overhead lighting. And—yes, now that she looks closer, she can actually see the faint pattern as it catches the light. Emerald green leaves and vines crawling up the cheap polyester, iridescent when the light hits it right and invisible otherwise. She can’t decide whether she thinks it’s ugly or just horribly sweet in a way she’s not even _slightly_ equipped to handle at the moment. 

She opts for laughing incredulously. “Tim, oh my God.” 

“You seemed so offended by the pocket square thing, so I thought I’d go for something refined. Classy. Plus, it had free two-day shipping,” he says proudly. 

“You really are something,” she tells him, and it comes out far too soft. He rolls his eyes and ducks his head, smiling, and okay, cool, if she doesn’t get at least three feet away from him soon she’s going to do something incredibly stupid and life-ruining. So she takes a step back and forces a smile. “So, uh—café?” 

“...Right!” He claps his hands together once and grimaces at himself for it. “Yeah, it’s two blocks down the road toward the ocean. Want to get going?” 

“Sure, cool, let’s do that.” As soon as it’s socially acceptable, Sasha makes a beeline for the door.

Before long, they’re back in their usual rhythm—God knows they’ve had plenty of practice recovering from stumbles like this—and bickering joyfully about marine life as they head closer to the beach, a topic neither of them know anything about.

“Crabs?” 

“Crabs are good.” 

“Hang on, you’re okay with crabs but not _dolphins?”_ Tim demands. 

“Dolphins are creepy! They’re way too smart—”

“But you like _dogs_ and _they’re_ smart—” 

“—and dolphins also chatter, right? Dogs don’t chatter. Nor do crabs, for that matter. It’s unnerving.” 

“...is that it? That’s your only issue with dolphins? The chattering?” 

“I mean, their heads look weird too,” she mutters. He laughs, and she glares at him. “What?”

“Nothing, I just— _seriously?_ I thought you’d have some damning scientific fact about the objective inferiority of the dolphin, but all you’ve got is—” 

“Listen, sometimes you just have to go with your gut,” she grumbles. 

“Sure,” Tim grins. “Anyways, I’ve never seen a live crab, so—”

“We _have_ to get you out of the city more often.”

“Trust me, I’d love that.” He pushes open the door to a small white building with a blue sign that reads “Adele’s Cafe and Sandwich Bar” and another reading “Cafe & Take-Away”. “Ladies first.” 

She rolls her eyes at him and steps through. The inside is equally small, crammed with tables and beach-themed decorations. “Want to take it to go or eat here?” 

“To go,” Tim says. “I want to go to the beach before the wedding.” 

Sasha pointedly looks between the two of them. They are horribly, horribly overdressed for both this restaurant and the beach. 

“Yeah, sounds good,” she says. He flashes her a thumbs-up and heads toward the counter. 

The café’s got typical breakfast and lunch fare: coffee, tea, various egg dishes, copious amounts of fish dishes due to location, scones, baguettes, paninis. Sasha opts for a chicken panini, Tim orders a baguette, and they wait for their meals in a silence that is adjacent to but not quite uncomfortable. The background noises of forks clinking against plates and the conversation of the other people in the café certainly help. 

When they get their food from the counter, they tuck into it immediately as they begin the walk to the coast; it occurs to Sasha that neither of them actually ate anything that could be called breakfast that morning, and she’s famished. She doesn’t exactly have the high metabolism of her youth (and the fact that she can think of her youth as something separate from her current reality is still sort of cognitively dissonant, honestly) but a single coffee is not, as it turns out, a sufficient meal when you’ve hardly eaten in hours. 

Ilfracombe is a nice town, in a nonthreatening but still distinctly touristy way. The streets are all narrow and winding and it takes them some time to navigate their way down to the seafront, but the time doesn’t feel wasted. The weather is, thankfully, cooperating with plans as well—it’s a pleasant 21° C or so, which means Sasha is comfortable in her dress, but Tim’s already sweating in his (extremely well-tailored, frankly unfairly good-looking, _oh God please stop this is embarrassing)_ dove grey suit.

“This is miserable,” he complains.

She reminds him, “Well, they did say the dress code’s—what was it?— _fancy-casual._ Not my fault you decided to disregard it. For all you know, you’re going to be upstaging the groom at his own wedding.”

Tim looks stricken. “Oh God. I didn’t even _consider_ that.” 

Against her will, she instantly feels kind of guilty. “I mean, don’t get me wrong—it’s a good suit, you look—” She has forgotten all adjectives that aren’t incriminating. “—very good,” she eventually settles on, gesturing up and down at him. _Nice save, Sasha,_ she thinks. 

“Thanks,” he says, lips turning up a bit at the edges in a way she can’t quite read. 

The beach is more of a cove and isn’t exactly rugged, but the cliffs surrounding it give it that effect. Because of the weather, there are plenty of people milling around, wading into the water, and sitting on towels on the sand. It’s all very nostalgic—Sasha hadn’t grown up by the ocean, but she’d had cousins in Weston-super-Mare who she’d visited every once in a while as a kid—and she’s regretting their decision to come here after getting fully ready for the wedding. 

Tim seems to be having the same thought next to her, grimacing. “I don’t wanna ruin my shoes.” 

She sighs. “They’re going to have to get a little ruined, seeing as it’s a beachside wedding—” 

“—but we probably don’t want to mess them up before then, yeah,” he finishes, also sighing. “Damn.” 

“Hm. We planned this rather poorly, didn’t we?” 

“Yep!” he agrees cheerfully, sitting down on the cement ledge between the rest of the town and the beach and swinging his legs over the edge. 

She joins him after dusting off the area, kicking her legs back and forth. “It’s, what, 12:45 now?” 

“Yeah. I figure we can start heading over in 45 minutes or so. Anyway, the ceremony’s not due to start til 2:30.” 

“Wow.” 

“Timing’s weird.” 

“Yeah, when I get married there’s no way I’m making it take this long.” 

He shoots her an amused look. “I think it’s all relative. I’m sure time’s flying for them, what with the last-minute panic and all.” 

She waves a hand dismissively. “Sounds like a personal problem. All I’m saying is the midafternoon time is weird. Like, either have the decency to wait until evening so everybody else can have, you know, a _day_ first, or have a morning wedding. Make it a full-day event.” 

“Hold them hostage,” Tim says, grinning. “I like it.” 

“And anyway if you’re last-minute-panicking—I mean, I feel like you should already be sure, right? If you’re subjecting everybody to an hours-long party specifically about your love, speeches included, you’d damn well better be sure of it.” 

He laughs. “To play devil’s advocate—” 

“Oh God, Tim, you can’t say those words in that order. I took an entry-level philosophy course in uni, you can’t just—” 

He raises his voice and repeats over her protests, _"To play devil’s advocate,_ it’s only natural to feel doubt about this kind of thing. I mean, you’re pledging your _life_ to someone.” 

“Yeah, I know, in sickness and in health, et cetera et cetera. Look, I’m just saying. If you’ve known somebody for years and you love them and you’ve already committed to spending your life together and the wedding’s just the icing on the cake—because you know as well as I do that you don’t need to have a wedding to do the other stuff—you should be sure. You should just be happy to get to do it.” Sasha resolutely does not look at him. Just stares out at the waves hitting the shore, unblinking, until her vision unfocuses. 

She can feel him trying to meet her eyes anyway. “I think you’re right, you know. Just—other people aren’t…” 

“Like us?” 

“Yeah.” 

“No shit,” she says, shaking her head and trying to laugh herself out of the moment. It mostly works, but there’s not much else to say after that. 

Sasha’s not an idiot. That’s the thing. She _knows_ friends don’t do this, the fake dating, or any of it, really. Friends don’t let those things drag out as long as they do, because stupid shit like this always happens. Like having conversations that are about too many things at once. Like wondering if a man you hooked up with a full year and a half ago is in love with you because you woke up in his arms last night. Like looking up at the stars and thinking you love him too, and isn’t _that_ the scariest thing in the world? Loving somebody you’ve never even had? 

So no, friends don’t do this. And she knows Tim knows that too. 

She also knows if they _acknowledge_ it, everything will come crumbling down. Except it’s getting harder and harder to remember that every day. 

Somewhere inside her, she knew all of that before here and now, sitting on the cement in some resort town in Devon. But it hits then, for some reason, all at once and so mundane and obvious she could scream. And the realization leaves her breathless. 

She blinks and looks back at the water. 

They gaze out at the ocean for a while, then, listening to the screeches of children, the murmur of distant conversation, the gentle crash of the waves. Tim’s swinging his legs back and forth in the air, and she’s doing the same. The rhythms don’t quite match up, and usually it’d annoy her, but she thinks right now that’s okay. 

* * *

In the back of her mind, Sasha’d been worried about making it to the venue—Tim hadn’t been too concerned about directions, but that was still a red flag for her considering his previously demonstrated navigational skills—but it turns out there are signs that seem to be permanent fixtures all through Ilfracombe pointing toward Tunnels Beaches. They just follow those, get their names checked against the RSVP list, and enter. 

Fittingly, one enters Tunnels Beach through a tunnel. She is overjoyed by the simplicity of this. Finally, something in the world that makes sense. 

As promised on the website, the venue is stunning. Open-air seating, a flower-bedecked gazebo, a picturesquely rugged coast with electric blue water visible from the patio where the wedding will take place. 

“Well, they certainly got their money’s worth,” Tim remarks under his breath and, almost as an afterthought, takes her hand as they move toward the crowd. It takes everything in her not to jump, but she covers her flinch by leaning into his side while they walk. 

From there, it’s a whirlwind of meeting relatives. Miraculously, Tim seems to actually know everybody’s name and introduces her to them easily, one after the other. Adi, Nadia, Sofia, Yasmin, Marcus, Jess and Tess (married. No, they are not joking), Ty, Maya—she loses track impressively quickly. He knows them for real, too. Asks Eve if her start-up’s gotten off the ground yet, laughs with Montague about some inside joke from a decade ago, remembers the niche interests the herd of teenagers had when he met them as kids. She’s awestruck, however reluctant she might be to admit it; she barely remembers what career her cousin Finley’s been pursuing for the last five years. 

Finally, they manage to get out of the crowd for a couple minutes, standing off to the side by the railing overlooking the beach. 

“They seem really happy to see you,” Sasha comments. 

He shrugs. “Well, it’s been a while, I guess.” 

“I mean, sure, but I only see my aunt about twice a decade these days and she doesn’t come barreling at me for a hug,” she smiles, nudging him on the arm. 

“Yeah. It’s… really good to see them too, honestly. You know, I almost cancelled when I got the invitation in the mail?” 

Sasha doesn’t ask. “Huh. Glad you didn’t.” 

“Yeah, me too.” He pauses, then shoots her a grin. “They’re happy to see you too.” 

She snorts. “Yeah, they all seemed thrilled that you’d finally gotten a girl.” 

He snickers. “God, remind me to keep my aunts away from you. They’ll start proposing to you in my stead. Especially when I tell them we’ve been together for—how long did we decide? A year? Yeah, they'll be expecting kids from us by 2018 at the _latest.”_

“I’ll keep that in mind,” she laughs. 

Their moment of respite ends there as people begin making their way to their assigned seats. They end up on Lee’s side of the aisle, though it doesn’t seem to matter much—there are plenty of people here who just seem to be friends of the couple. The ceremony takes longer to start than scheduled, but that’s to be expected with any wedding, though Sasha’s only gone to a few in her lifetime, not being close to her extended family and not having any friends she was particularly close to after uni. 

She feels a pang of unexpected sorrow there, the old loneliness creeping back in for a moment, but she reaches over to take Tim’s hand. He doesn’t look surprised, just interlocks their fingers and squeezes once before letting their joined hands come to rest on his knee. 

They stay that way for the entire ceremony. Even as jaded as she is, she has to admit it’s a beautiful affair. Lee and Mira look incredibly natural together, somehow managing to genuinely grin at each other for the full twenty-five minutes. The officiant’s a friend of theirs—secular wedding—and she’s a good public speaker, which is more than Sasha can say about most of the officiants she’s seen in her time. The vows are personally written and surprisingly affecting; out of the corner of her eye, she can see Tim’s eyebrows raising more and more with every line of poetry Lee apparently wrote himself about his and Mira’s relationship (though, to be fair, she remembers Tim telling her that he’d only known Lee when they were both idiot teenagers). They close out with the traditional Christian vows, though. Sickness, health, death do us part, so forth. Lee and Mira kiss, and she finds herself smiling for real, and then—that’s it. 

Now for the hard part, she supposes. 

It’s late afternoon now, and cocktail hour’s beginning while the wedding party takes photos on the flower-adorned patio and the beach. She and Tim mostly keep to the edges, drifting between groups of friends and family chatting together. 

She’ll never really stop admiring his social talent, she thinks. It’s not as though she’s unsociable or anything, but she’s got nothing on his sheer skill when it comes to making people feel appreciated and comfortable. He’d drawn her out of her shell when she’d just transferred into Research and she still considers herself lucky to have become his actual friend. She supposes somewhere along the line she’d just gotten used to feeling like people’s _projects._ Mostly, when she was younger and far less confident, people had befriended her seemingly just to prove that they could get the quiet nerd to say something. Not so with Tim. God, it’s depressing to think about how much of a novelty it felt like to have somebody who listened to what she said and wanted to know her and joked with her and talked to her just because he could. But, well. There it was. 

There’s plenty of interrogation about their relationship, especially from the aunts and uncles Tim was close to, but less than they’d anticipated, honestly. 

“So how’d you two get together?” asks one of the uncles—Eddie, she thinks, a jovial balding man with Tim’s golden-brown skin and dark hair and the same devil-may-care crookedness to his smile. 

_Great,_ Sasha thinks. _The one thing we didn’t hash out beforehand._ And it was such an obvious question too. 

She’s opening her mouth to respond with their usual bull, something about university and hate at first sight and then they finally figured it out a year ago or whatever they’d agreed on, but Tim just shifts his weight, wraps his arm more decisively around her waist, and says, “Oh, you know. Office romance.” 

She’s too well-practiced to give him a suspicious glare the way she longs to, but she hopes he can feel that sentiment emanating off of her. “Yep. It was a lot of buildup. We didn’t want to—to, uh, mess with the workplace environment, so we just stayed friends for a while, but we always wanted more. Then a year ago—” 

“It seemed stupid to put it off any longer, really. I mean, we clearly wanted to be together, so we just—” 

“Got together, yeah. Ran out of excuses not to,” Sasha says, belatedly remembering to smile lovingly down at Tim. He’s already gazing back, of course. Already looking at her soft-eyed like she’s the whole world. 

“Congratulations,” Maybe-Eddie says, and then starts monologuing about his second divorce. 

When Maybe-Eddie finally leaves them be ten minutes later, Tim’s face collapses from its serious, politely engaged mask into a laugh. “God. I love my family.” 

“They’re… really something,” she replies. Then: " _Office romance,_ though, really?” 

“Yeah, sure,” he says, but he’s avoiding her eyes. “I mean, it’d be ridiculous for us to have liked each other since uni but still not have worked it out, like, _way_ over a decade later.”

For some reason, Sasha finds herself to be incredibly defensive of her alter ego. “Hey, I mean, you never know! Some people don’t work out stuff that’s really obvious for a really long time. People are like that.” 

He glances back at her, eyebrow raised. “Yeah, but we aren’t.” It feels like a challenge of some sort.

“We could be,” she mutters, and this time she’s the one to look away first. 

He scoffs like he’s about to say something else, but then one of Tim’s second-nieces-once-removed or whatever recognizes him and comes racing up to leap into his arms. _“Uncle Tim!”_ the kid shouts, squirming around in Tim’s grip to beam up at him, and then it’s off to the races again. Sasha is inherently awkward with kids, but she’s trying her hardest and she thinks Tim appreciates her at least making an effort to try and talk to the little girl (who Tim introduces to her as Kyra). That takes up another fifteen minutes, until Kyra’s mom comes rushing up to scold her about running off, and then they’re getting ushered to their seats for dinner and speeches, and there’s another hour and a half gone. 

In the rush of activity, she can almost forget any lingering tension and just focus on holding Tim’s hand and playing the besotted girlfriend meeting the family, watching the toasts and half-zoning out. Almost. At any rate, the best man’s speech is decidedly mediocre but the maid of honor’s is pretty good, and either way she’s only partially paying attention, so the ordeal is overall not nearly as bad as it could’ve been. Then it’s snacks and cake and the sun’s somehow already starting to go down, and the evening guests begin to arrive. 

It gets louder after that. Significantly more hectic. The bar starts working in earnest, and the live band gets set up in preparation for the first dance. There’s less need for conversation; at this point Sasha is mostly arm candy at best. She’d be bored out of her mind if it weren’t for Tim leaning down every couple minutes or so to whisper in her ear, presumably sweet nothings from the outside perspective but in actuality a litany of all the weird shit the people around them have done in his years of knowing them. At least half of it _has_ to be fake—frankly, the alternative is upsetting—but it keeps her from losing it, so it’s doing its job. 

Soon enough, they get ushered off to the edges of the patio for the first dance, which turns out to be to some Beatles song that Sasha is proud to say she doesn’t know the name of. Lee and Mira clearly rehearsed the waltz to death before tonight, and they look almost otherworldly, gliding over the bricks. When they invite the rest of the bridesmaids and groomsmen to join them two verses in, they’re a little less practiced, but she would still be happy to watch them for however long the song was going to last. Except then Lee drags his eyes away from his wife just long enough to wave everybody else onto the floor. 

Sasha casts a nervous glance at Tim and whispers, “Uh, Tim—?” 

“Just go with it,” he hisses back and leads her out onto the bricks, placing a hand on her waist and using the other hand to grab hers and heft it up into the air. 

“Romantic,” she mutters under her breath, “truly, the tenderness is overwhelming,” and he rolls her eyes at her and pointedly tugs her against his chest so that they actually look like a couple as opposed to two teenagers leaving room for Jesus. 

“Hope you know how to waltz,” he whispers into her ear, and she pulls back and grimaces at him in answer, but it’s too late; he’s already taking a step back and looking at her expectantly. 

“Why aren’t you doing the lead part?” Sasha whispers back, falling into step with him nonetheless. She has, in fact, waltzed before, but it was a unit in PE, not classical training or whatever. She’d had to dance with a boy about six inches shorter than her and therefore had ample experience both leading (on good days) and following (when Dominick Nelson’s wounded masculinity overwhelmed his ability to be reasoned with). 

He leans his head against hers very romantically and grumbles, “I never actually took classes, but Danny did, and he always insisted that I practice with him before recitals, so here we are.” 

“And he never let you lead?” she laughs at him quietly. 

“Nope. Not once.” 

“You never learned how to lead a box step in your decades of being alive?” 

“Sasha, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I don’t lead a life where dancing the lead in waltzes is a skill that comes up too often.” 

“Point taken,” she concedes. 

He snorts. “Glad you saw reason.” 

As it turns out, Tim’s far better at it than she is, even if it has been years since he’s last had a reason to dance. To be fair, it’s been a while for her, too, but he falls into the rhythm within two or three lines of Paul McCartney’s crooning (or is it John Lennon’s? Never mind, she doesn’t care), patiently waiting for her to catch up and not smirking too much when she misses a step and throws them both off-beat. Eventually, they manage to reach a state that approximates natural waltz, the movements coming mostly without thought, like they’ve been partners for years. Which, she supposes, they have. And really, a new dimension to it doesn’t make much difference at all. _Stop thinking in laboured metaphors to justify yourself,_ she tells herself sternly. 

It’s still nice, though. The music fades into background noise and Sasha allows herself to enjoy the moment for what it is. The pace of the song has slowed enough as it winds down that they’re essentially just drifting around while leaning against each other, and that’s not a bad thing at all. She’s got something like an inch on him now that she’s wearing three-inch heels, so he’s got the side of his face tilted into her neck, and she leans her cheek against the top of his head and gazes up at the lanterns ringing the patio, lighting the dance floor up gold. Even with the singing and the guitar, she can hear the waves crashing into the rocks arrhythmically, and as they navigate through the sea of people dancing, everything is almost easy. 

The song comes to the end, of course. It has to. The newly married couple somehow manage to fling themselves even closer and embrace again joyfully, smiling too hard for the kiss to be anything more than them pressing their foreheads together and laughing near-deliriously. She finds herself smiling too, however much she may tell herself she finds it disgustingly saccharine. And anyway, if there’s anything she’s learned from this trip, it’s that she wants that too.

Tim notices her smiling and nudges her with an elbow as they pull apart, him letting go of her hand. “Going soft in your old age?” 

“Oh, whatever. Like you aren’t.” 

“Well. Tootch, I suppose.” 

“It’s touché.” 

“I have no idea what you’re talking about. Wanna go mill around some more? I, personally, have no desire to dance to Ed Sheeran’s latest,” he says, gesturing in the general direction of the band. 

She shrugs, suddenly weary. “I think I’m gonna go sit down for a while, actually. But, uh—have a good time?” she hazards, and he shrugs back, mouth pulling into a flat line. 

“Always do! See ya, I guess,” he says, makes as if to leave, then hesitates. “Uh—” Then he kisses her, chaste and extremely brief, before darting away again, cheeks red. “Yeah. See ya.” 

“See ya,” she echoes blankly. 

Sasha wanders off to the railing and waits a respectable nine and a half seconds before putting her face in her hands and groaning. 

She’s not sure how long she spends there, leaning against the glass barrier. Some of the reception has moved inside to the bar and the multiple floors of space to dance and chat, especially now that the air’s getting cooler. At least it’s quieter like this. The moon is rising now, just starting to show over the cliffs that surround the cove. Even with the light from the lanterns, she can still faintly see the stars. North Star, Big Dipper, Orion’s Belt. She wishes she knew any others. But there are clouds coming in anyway from the ocean, billowing cumulonimbus ones beginning to fill up the horizon, so it hardly matters anyway. 

It’s hard not to feel melancholy. It’s just the perfect environment for it, that’s all—party roaring on behind her, snippets of excited conversation drifting out, music reverberating through the speakers both inside and outside the building. Sometimes she can pick out a melody. Fleetwood Mac or something. Everything feels so distant but simultaneously just immediate enough for her to feel like she’s missing. To feel lost and somehow defective, but also strangely peaceful. It’s an odd sort of nostalgia, echoing back into moments to herself, stolen through the years outside various clubs or pubs or parties during her university or high school years. The solitude that is both affirming and profoundly isolating. 

She kind of wants to be devoured by the sea and never return again. She also kind of wants to find Tim to ask him who the hell decided to play Fleetwood Mac's _Rumours_ at a wedding reception considering how half of the songs are about cheating on people, partially to get an answer and partially just to see him laugh. 

It’s in these throes of half-earnest and half-amusedly-self-deprecating melancholia that Tim’s mother finds her. 

“Hi,” she says. She looks unsettlingly similar to him. Older, yes, with a more oval, stern face, but the eyes and nose are the same. She’s holding a flute of champagne close to her chest as if for protection. 

“Hi,” she returns. “I’m Sasha.” 

“I know,” she says with a bit of a smile. “We met earlier.” Her voice is gently amused, but the smile is sharp. Sasha remembers that (and suddenly sort of understands why) Tim’s relationship with his mother is, in his words, “okay but, uh, also mostly strained”. 

“Ah, yeah. Just, you know. Thought I’d say in case.” She musters up a smile that Tim’s mother returns. When they’d been introduced, she’d insisted with forceful levity that Sasha just call her Mum, but it just feels—

“You…” The older woman trails off. “I think you and my son are good together. I’m happy he has you.” The words look like they cause her great pain. 

In theory, this is an emotional moment of bonding, a solidarity of some kind found in the mutual love for somebody who matters to them. In practice, it’s mostly just awkward. 

“Er… thank you,” she says. “I appreciate that a lot, actually.” Tries for another smile. 

The seconds stretch out. 

Tim’s mother nods at her, takes a drink from her glass of champagne, and leaves without another word. 

Sasha watches her go. Her approval somehow feels both undeserved and underwhelming. She turns back to the ocean, and nobody bothers her again until Tim comes back out of the building twenty or so minutes later, grinning broadly. He heads straight for her, still smiling. 

“Hey,” he says, reaching her side and leaning against the railing with her. 

“Hey,” she returns quietly. 

He knocks their shoulders together softly. “You okay?” 

“Yeah, I’m alright,” she says, mostly meaning it. 

“If you want to go, we can,” he tells her. 

She shrugs. “I don’t know if I want to leave yet. I mean, it’s what, 10? If that?” 

“That’s fair,” he says, then taps his fingers twice against the railing. “We could go down to the beach.” 

She raises an eyebrow. “Really? Just leave the party early?” 

“Sure, why not?” he asks, already starting to get excited at his own suggestion. “I’ve already talked to everybody I want to talk to. And if I’m going to mess up my shoes—” 

“You are _not_ messing up your shoes, Tim,” she chides, smiling anyway. “We’ll take that stuff off before we get to the sand.”

“Ooo, skinny dipping?” 

“No,” she vetoes. “Absolutely not. Not warm enough anyway.” 

_“That’s_ your problem with the skinny dipping idea? The weather?”

“Yeah, your entire family being a couple hundred yards away had nothing to do with it. In fact, I think it's ideal. You’ve caught me. I’m a total exhibitionist,” Sasha deadpans, heading for the path down to the shore.

He laughs and follows her. “Noted.” 

She rolls her eyes at him. _“Anyway._ I’m assuming you don’t go to beaches much?” 

Tim sighs, loping a couple steps to catch up with her. “No, never had much cause to. I mean, we took a family trip or two down to Bournemouth when I was a teenager, but I was more interested in the arcades at that age. All the public beaches were too crowded to be much fun, honestly.”

“Fair enough,” she says. “That’s so _weird,_ though.” They reach the edge of the sand and take off their shoes, Tim shrugging off his jacket and rolling up his sleeves as well, before continuing on barefoot into the cool sand.

“Listen, we can’t all live lives where the beach is, like, a _weekend jaunt,”_ he says defensively. “Some of us have to work for it.” 

“Right, of course. Sorry for minimizing your suffering.” 

“Forgiven,” he sniffs. “Just don’t do it again.” 

They fall into a contemplative silence then, much by accident. The sea is something else entirely at night, transformed by the darkness into something that verges on sacred, and the sheer vastness becomes unignorable. It's hard not to be quiet when faced with something like that. Tim gazes around the cliffs and the waves breaking in the moonlight with naked awe, and Sasha can’t restrain a smile watching him.

When they reach the edge of the water, she doesn’t hesitate before rolling the hem of her dress up a few inches and wading in. 

Tim grimaces at the prospect of stretching his pants but follows suit, tugging them up to his knees to avoid getting them wet. “Unfair,” he complains, rolling the pant legs at the cuffs to secure them as he stumbles in after her.

“Well, next time you can wear the dress,” she calls over her shoulder, laughing. _Next time._

“Maybe I will! I bet you’d look good in a suit.” 

“I _do!”_

“I don’t doubt it! Why are we arguing!” 

Sasha laughs again and raises her arms. “Hell if I know!” 

The water is cold against her skin, surprisingly so, but the contrast with the humid air around her makes it a pleasant sensation. She trails her fingers through the water and flicks some at Tim, who yelps and flinches back when it hits him in the face. 

“C’mon, Sash!” he whines. “You know I can’t fight back; I don’t wanna ruin your clothes.” He actually _pouts_ at her. Christ. 

“Aw, poor you. Gentlemanly to a fault.” She flicks more droplets at him. 

“We’re going to have to come back here again,” he threatens. “Just so I can have my revenge.” 

“I’m so intimidated,” she grins, and he grins back, rolling his eyes. 

The quiet settles back in, broken only by splashes as they navigate their way through the shallow pools of seawater. It’s been happening more and more frequently as the years go by, and she’s noticing that they unsettle her less each time. It feels like, for once in her life, there’s nowhere else she’s supposed to be, nothing else she’s supposed to be doing. She can just be here. With him. 

He’s looking back up at the sky again as the clouds roll in. The half-moon gives enough light to see by as they walk, but he comes to a stop anyway and cranes his neck back toward the stars, hands shoved into his pockets. 

“What’re you doing?” she asks quietly. 

Tim doesn’t glance at her, but she can see the bright flicker of a smile anyway. “Looking for shooting stars.” 

Sasha watches him, moonlit and smiling, and she’s just—lost, for a moment, in the sheer immensity of her love for him. She is paralyzed by it so often but now more than ever, and for so long she’s wanted—

She’s just _wanted._

And she’s so, so tired of telling herself not to. 

She grabs his hand, then, fast, and his head jerks to look at her, and he opens his mouth like he’s about to make a joke, but he must recognize something in her expression because he closes it just as quickly. 

“Tim,” she says. Just that. There seems like there’s not much else to say. 

“Okay. Um—” He looks confused but not quite afraid, and that spurs her on at least a bit. 

“So we messed it up the first time,” she rushes out, and his expression resolves into clarity. 

“Oh. Sasha, we don’t have to—” 

“No, let me—” She gestures with her free hand. “We messed it up the first time, yeah, but there’s—I mean—” 

“What are you trying to—” 

“God, I didn’t fucking plan this, I just—Tim. I don’t—I think we actually got it right that night? I think we messed up after.” Her heart clenches. This is the worst and probably bravest she’s felt since—she doesn’t even know when. She takes a deep, shaking breath in lieu of looking him in the eye. “Listen, I’m not… I don’t know how to say it right, but Tim, I’ve spent the last year and a half being your friend, and it’s _enough—_ anything would be enough with you, and you’re my best friend and that means so much to me, but I want—” 

“I—alright, hang on—” 

“And if you don’t want to it’s fine and I’ll be embarrassed for probably the rest of my natural life for trying to do this whole dramatic speech thing, but I’ll still—I’ll still be your friend.” 

He shakes his head and smiles sadly. “Sasha, I—we said we wouldn’t make it weird last time. And you and I both know how that went.” 

“Well, second time’s the charm,” she says. 

“Yeah, that _is_ how the saying goes,” he half-chuckles, half-whispers. “Sure.” 

She looks at him and he looks back. 

After a long beat, Sasha says, “Sooo….?” 

Tim laughs breathlessly, other hand going up to the side of her face. “Yeah—God, yeah, you have no idea how—” 

She’ll continue having no idea, though, because at that point she goes up on tiptoes and crushes their lips together, kisses him like it’s her last chance to do it and hopes like hell that it isn’t. Sasha winds her fingers up into his hair and messes it up the way she hasn’t stopped wanting to do since fucking _2014,_ and nothing about it is even remotely artificial or feigned or possible to explain away. Leaning up and forward to get closer, she overbalances and almost drags them both into the water but just manages to catch herself before either of them fall. 

He laughs again into her mouth and pulls just far enough back to say, “Damn, alright, message received—” and she rolls her eyes and drags him back in by his (definitely ugly) tie to kiss him again, this time mostly to shut him up, and she’s sure he knows that based on the way he can’t stop smiling. 

She’s not entirely sure how long they stay there—at a certain point, time blurs into itself; Tim’s quite good at making that happen—just that when the first drop of rain hits her forehead she barely even registers it. The only reason she notices it’s started raining at all is that Tim breaks the kiss to stare balefully up at the now-dark sky, and then the rain comes down in earnest as if to retort. 

Tim yelps and starts beating a hasty retreat back to land and shelter in a desperate bid not to get his fancy clothes even wetter, but just ends up splashing more water around. Sasha follows, laughing. It’s a real downpour, the heavy kind unstirred by wind that just comes down in unforgiving sheets. The night is still warm, though, and like the seawater, the cool rain almost feels like a benediction in its own right, even though it’s probably not doing her dress any good. They race back over the wet sand at a full sprint, hand in hand. For a moment, both of them silently debate returning to the wedding reception at least to pay their best wishes to the newlyweds, sodden clothing and all, but all things considered Wisteria Cottage sounds like a _far_ better option. 

They set off again at a dead run, Tim holding his dress shoes in one hand and Sasha’s hand in the other, Sasha clutching his suit jacket to her chest and curling over it slightly in the hopes that it won’t be too badly damaged. The streets are just as difficult to navigate as they were the previous night, but by some stroke of luck Sasha manages to take all the right turns at the right times and they’re back at the cottage again, and Tim’s still laughing and so is she, loudly and wildly. She tosses his jacket into the safety of the cottage as soon as he manages to get the door unlocked before darting outside again one last time to tip her head back into the rain, grinning up at the dark sky. 

He comes out to stand next to her after a moment, wet black hair sticking to his forehead. “Alright?” 

She kisses him again in the downpour, just because she can, and when she pulls away, thumb smoothing raindrops off of his cheekbone, she smiles. “Never better.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks so much for reading! we're almost there, folks. 
> 
> some housekeeping: tunnels beaches is an [actual wedding venue](http://www.tunnelsbeaches.co.uk/venue.html) (terrible name and all). they have truly wild amounts of information on their site and also it's legit beautiful, so i owe them my life. tragically wisteria cottage doesn't exist; it's like three airbnbs in ilfracombe combined into one as much as i may wish otherwise. the café is real too.
> 
> yes, wonderwall is a timsasha song. when i make a playlist for this fic it _will_ be featured. i refuse to apologize for being right.
> 
> EDIT: [@the-ipre](https://the-ipre.tumblr.com) on tumblr made [beautiful fanart](https://boneroutes.tumblr.com/post/627706165891137536/the-ipre-happy-birthday-to-akosyy-a-better) for this chapter go check it out bc!!! aaaaahhH!!!!!!
> 
> and as always, you can find me on tumblr [@boneroutes](https://boneroutes.tumblr.com). the next chapter will be up in the next two weeks, and it'll be tim pov—i've missed writing him! thank you again!


	7. laugh, leaning back in my arms

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "... for life's not a paragraph / and death i think is no parenthesis" - e. e. cummings, ["since feeling is first"](https://dailypoetry.me/e-e-cummings/since-feeling-is-first/)
> 
> As with everything important, there's an aftermath.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> endless thanks to [gauras](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gauras/pseuds/gauras) here on ao3 for beta reading this, and if you haven't checked out her work yet, holy shit where have you been go do that! read this first though ghklsdjflkh
> 
> sorry this took almost a calendar month to get up—it fought me kicking and screaming in the way no other fic chapter ever has—but i hope you all enjoy this denouement!

_\+ 1. 29th of July, 2016_

When Tim wakes up, he isn’t alone. 

Light is streaming in through the window on the opposite wall—they must’ve forgotten to close the curtains last night—and the digital clock on the nightstand reads out 7:27, and the white sheets are bunched up around his ribs, and the duvet’s been flung half off the bed, and he _isn’t alone._

His surprise registers with him before the reason for it does. 

Sasha’s still here. 

She’s curled toward him, forehead tilting into his chin, her palm hot over his hipbone. The proximity’s just as uncomfortably warm as it was when he woke up like this yesterday morning, but unlike yesterday morning, he can’t think of a reason in the world to disentangle himself. 

It had been hard enough the first time, carefully shifting out of her grasp—surprisingly strong and insistent, even in sleep—and pulling the covers back up around her. He’d had to allow himself a moment of weakness then to take it all in: the morning light casting her upturned face in rich gold, her usual intensity gone gentle with sleep, her hand resting over where he’d been seconds earlier. It was a revelation of the worst kind at the worst possible time. You can’t lie in bed with your best friend and think _I wish this were every day,_ it’s not—so he took a few guilty seconds to just look and then he turned away and went to the kitchen to scope out the breakfast situation and didn’t think about it. The Tim Stoker Specialty. 

Now, though, he revels in the novelty of being here and not having to move. He can breathe easy. 

It takes Sasha a bit longer to wake up, for all that she claims to be an early riser. For his part, he pretends he hasn’t been openly gazing at her for the last five minutes. 

She stirs against his chest and tips her head back to look him in the eye. “Hi,” she says, voice sleep-raspy. 

“Hi.” God, he’s already grinning like an idiot. He can’t bring himself to care.

For a second, they just look at each other before Sasha finally breaks and laughs, shaking her head. “We really…” 

“Yyyep! Sure did!”

“And it only took us, what, a year and a half to figure it out?” 

“Admirable, really, all things considered.” 

“Mm. If you say so,” she mutters, still half-smiling. 

“I do!” Tim confirms brightly. “I mean, hey, we got there in the end.” And of course he’s dying to ask where, exactly, _here_ is, but far be it from him to introduce a serious topic when things are actually going well for once. 

“Yeah,” she says quietly, and she’s still looking at him intently but it’s somehow more subdued, her head tipped sideways as if in consideration. The smile lingers on her lips, gentler than he’s used to. 

He holds her gaze for another couple of seconds before drumming his fingertips lightly against her shoulder. “Whatcha thinkin’ about?” 

Sasha startles and snaps out of whatever daze she’d fallen into. “Oh, just—” She laughs awkwardly, looking away. “I-I don’t know.” 

“Sure you don’t.” 

She rolls her eyes at him, all disdain and fond exasperation, and Tim feels—relieved, maybe. Whenever he entertained the idea of—whatever this was, it wasn’t that he thought everything would change, necessarily. But he dreaded the minute erosion of everything that made their friendship what it was. He doesn’t want a girlfriend, he wants _Sasha,_ awkward and impulsive and intimidatingly smart and sometimes kind of mean even when she isn’t trying to be and unwilling to put up with anybody’s bullshit, including his. 

If things went weird again, he’d—he doesn’t even know what he’d do. 

He raises his eyebrows at her when she doesn’t reply and she relents, grumbling, _“Alright,_ alright, I just—you’re going to laugh at me.”

“Am not,” he protests, affronted.

“No, you absolutely are. There’s no— _graceful_ way to put this.” 

“Well, now you’ve got me nervous.” 

“Oh, shut up. I guess it’s just—are we—?” She waves a hand in the air uselessly. “You know.” 

Tim grins; he can’t stop himself. “You know, I’m afraid I don’t.”

 _“Tim.”_

“What? Not laughing, and I’m being completely honest. You haven’t actually _said_ anything.” And he realizes as he says it that he’s joking, but also—not really. There’s that restlessness curling uncomfortably in his chest that’s kept him on edge and never quite comfortable for months now, even now that he’s in bed with her. 

So often, things between them can remain unspoken. It’s part of why they _work;_ they don’t have to explain themselves to each other. They understand without asking. But this, Tim thinks, he needs to hear aloud. 

She heaves a sigh, mouth pulling sideways. “Fine. Is this—how serious is this for you?” 

Ah. There it is. 

Tim takes in a breath and lets it out slowly, rubs his thumb over the slope of her shoulder, closes his eyes just briefly. “It’s, uh. It’s serious.” The words come out more hushed than he’d intended, not that volume would make much difference now. 

Sasha exhales a breath of a laugh and squeezes his hip. “Well, good. Me too.” 

“So that’s it?” he says, half-laughing too. 

“Looks like.” 

“And it took us _two years?”_

Her brows pinch together minutely. “I thought it was only a year and a half.” 

“No, see, it—” Tim grimaces and drags a hand over his face. “Ah.” 

“What?” Sasha grins, wriggling a little to prop herself up on her elbow and peer down at him. 

“It’s—okay, I didn’t make fun of you, so—” 

“I make no guarantees. You have to tell me, though. I said my thing, you have to do yours, it’s only fair!” 

“All’s fair in love and war,” he contends. “But fine. Two years for me, yes.”

“C’mon, you have to give me at least a _little_ more than that,” she wheedles, and he rolls his eyes. 

“What more d’you _want_ from me?” he complains. “Yes, I’ve been an utter mess since before we even got moved to the Archives, even before we hooked up for the first time. Big, inconvenient crush on my best friend, blah blah blah. Happens to the best of us, alright?” 

“Aww, _Tim.”_

“Don’t patronize me,” he mutters, burying his face in the pillows.

“I would never!” Sasha says indignantly. “It’s sweet.” She shoves at his shoulder in an effort to get him to flip over, and despite it all, he does so willingly, flopping onto his back and mock-glaring up at her. Sasha snorts and bends down to kiss the wrinkle of his brow, and he’s annoyed to find that he can’t keep frowning in light of that. 

“It was supposed to be short-term,” he gripes. 

She smiles at him smugly. “But it wasn’t.”

“Nope. I mean, clearly.” He gestures broadly at all of it. The rumpled bedsheets. Last night’s clothes strewn across the carpet. The two of them in bed together. The endless months they’d spent in their brinkmanship dance, finding any excuse to touch each other and pretending it was all an act. 

Tim thinks she understands; the smile softens and she’s back to pensively considering him. “When did you start?” 

“What, d’you think I can pin down a date?” he says incredulously. “Sash, I forget what day of the week it is half the time.” 

She huffs. “So do I! I was just wondering! I mean, alright, you said two years, so I thought you might—”

“No, I don’t have it down to the day,” he says more gently, then sighs. “There wasn’t even one moment, honestly. Like, I couldn’t pinpoint any one thing that made me go _oh, shit, it has to be her._ It was just—suddenly I couldn’t imagine really wanting anyone else. At least not like this.” 

Sasha ducks her head away. “I—oh.”

Tim laughs in spite of himself, reaching a hand out to brush curls away from her face. “You know, you keep asking me these kinds of questions, and then when I answer them—”

“I didn’t expect you to be all—look, you always do this, you’re all flippant and jokey and, you know, _you,_ and then suddenly you’re just so _sincere_ and _sweet_ and it’s like—” 

“That’s me too, Sash.” 

She sobers, looks up again to meet his eyes. “I know.” 

Tim knows she means it. She knows him.

He lets that rest for a moment before scooting closer to nudge her. “So when’d you start?” 

“Oh God,” she mumbles, chuckling embarrassedly. 

“Hey, emotional vulnerability’s a two-way street, Sash!” he exclaims, beaming. “You have to tell me.” 

“I do not.” 

“...Please?”

 _“Fine.”_ She relents quickly after having put up her token resistance. “Right, don’t hate me for this, but I honestly had no idea—I mean, okay, I felt things before then, but none of it registered _at all_ until—” A dramatic, put-upon sigh. “The 17th of November, 2014.” 

Sasha pauses like the date is supposed to hold some great significance to him.

He shifts uncomfortably under her gaze. “...I feel like it’s a mistake to ask, but what happened on the 17th of November, 2014?” 

“That was the—oh, you know.”

“No, I d—hang on. Was that the night we—?”

“Yes, _that night._ When we were at that awful little pub with—with Brad and Emily. It was just—I don’t know, you were holding my hand, and we were talking and laughing and mostly ignoring them, and yeah, we were only pretending, but it was so _easy._ And I thought that was it afterwards, that I’d just gotten confused what with the—alright, _what?”_ she demands, breaking off, and Tim realizes he’s staring at her wide-eyed. 

“Nothing, just. You remembered the date?” 

She blinks at him. “Of course I did. I like—I like remembering things like that, knowing exactly when they happened, so I wrote it down. It felt… significant.” The look on his face must really be something because she ducks her head again, this time with an awkward, flustered smile that looks almost pained. “And I know it’s stupid, but—”

“Sasha,” he interrupts gently. “That’s—I think that’s probably the sweetest thing I’ve ever heard.” 

She wrinkles her nose, unconvinced. “Don’t be all—” 

“I mean it,” Tim insists, pushing himself up on his forearm so he can look her in the eye.

Her gaze softens. “You really do, don’t you?” 

“Yep,” he smiles, and he bridges the small distance between them to kiss her for the first time this morning—really, it’s a miracle he’s held off this long, all things considered—and she leans into him easily, one of her hands coming up to splay across his chest. It’s lazy, unhurried in a way none of their other kisses have been. 

Probably, he thinks through a haze, because he’s not afraid anymore that this is the last chance he’ll get. Despite everything, there’ll be hundreds of mornings like this, hopefully. Thousands. In his flat and in hers and maybe later in a home they share together, with London or the countryside or some bland English town out the window and light coming in through the curtains. The scene doesn’t matter anyway. All that matters is the partner. 

“You’re thinking too hard,” Sasha mumbles against his lips. “We’re done with that bit.” 

Tim huffs out a laugh, startled and a little embarrassed. “Guilty as charged. Sorry.” 

“Mm. Just don’t do it again and I’ll let it slide.” She kisses him again, brief but pointed. “When do we have to be out of here by?” 

“Checkout’s at 11:30, and it’s somewhere around 8 now.”

“Oh good. More than enough time.” She grins, and she pulls him back in. 

* * *

Once they do finally leave the bedroom (after tidying the place up a bit and throwing the sheets in the wash, of course; they’re not _that_ bad, and Tim figures they’re sort of indebted to the AirBNB owner on some level anyway), they have just enough time to make coffee, shower, and pack up before leaving. There’s no point in telling themselves they care about making it back to the Archives before lunch—they would’ve had to leave at 7 for that to work out—so they get ready at a meandering pace, knowing that there’s nowhere they really have to be. 

He’ll almost be sad to leave Wisteria Cottage, honestly. Although they’d spent under forty-eight hours there, he’s already nostalgic about the little white house. As he waits for Sasha to finish her last sweep of the cottage to make sure neither of them forgets anything, he finds himself sitting out on the patio, looking up at the sky wistfully. It’s a beautiful day like the day before, the sky bright blue with only a few clouds scudding across. There’s no trace of the previous night’s sudden storm, and Tim could almost trick himself into thinking he imagined it. Not that he would want to. 

His nice suit is probably a mess, which is a shame, really; he’d tried not to look at the fabric too closely as he stuffed it into his suitcase. He had bought the pieces ages ago with his first paycheck from his publishing job at Bloomsbury, his first really fancy clothing. Went to a tailor and everything. Honestly, it’s a small wonder they lasted as long as they did, but it’s still a loss. Alright, though. Tim would take last night over a hundred suits. Even if he _does_ look absurdly good in dove grey. 

A meow from by his feet distracts him from his mourning, and he looks down to see a white-and-orange tabby cat, presumably the one from the AirBNB listing.

“Oh, hey,” he grins. “There you are. As advertised, huh?” The cat purrs and butts his head against his hand, and he gives it some uncertain scritches behind the ear. 

He’s never been totally sure how to act around cats—the flat he’d grown up in didn’t allow any pets other than, like, fish, so while he now has strong opinions about bettas, he has limited experience when it comes to interacting with any other animals—but this one seems relatively forgiving, rubbing his jaw along the side of Tim’s hand. 

“Hey, bud,” he murmurs. “You’re, uh—you’re a good cat. Yeah.” He can’t stop himself from smiling. “Damn, what was your name again? Something weird, right? Amberjack?” 

“What, like the fish?” 

Tim startles at the sound of Sasha’s voice, pulling his hand away from the cat, and glances up at her. “I mean, I assume so. Makes sense for a cat in a port town.” Amberjack meows plaintively, so he goes back to petting him.

“Well, I can appreciate a cat owner who understands the importance of theme,” Sasha concedes, rolling her suitcase to the side and sitting next to him. "Still think it's a stupid name, though." 

“You’re just bitter ‘cause you’re allergic,” Tim says sagely. 

She grimaces. “Maybe so.” Regardless, she reaches out to give Amberjack a few careful strokes along his spine. “I’ll live,” she says half to herself, and Tim grins. _Maybe someday we’ll get a dog,_ he thinks. That’d probably mean moving out of the city, but he’s starting to think he might not mind that so much. They wouldn’t have to go too far anyway, just enough for them to get a house that they’d maybe be able to pay off before they die. Somewhere with a real backyard. 

_Shut up, Tim,_ the rational side of his brain chimes in. _You’ve been dating for less than four hours and for all you know you’ll get eaten to death by worms soon._

The rational side of his brain sucks.

“We should probably leave soon,” he admits reluctantly after a few minutes of contented cat-petting. 

She sighs. “Yeah, probably.” Amberjack rolls onto his back invitingly to show his belly and twists his head to look at them, tail twitching back and forth.

“We’re not falling for that, you know,” Tim sternly informs him. The cat blinks at them before giving an unsatisfied _mrrp_ and climbing back to his feet to trot away with a jingle of his collar, head held high. 

Sasha brushes cat hair off her legs (ineffectually) and stands. “Alright, let’s go.” Tim starts to head to the driver’s side door, but she catches him by the arm. “No way are you driving.” 

“What’s wrong with my driving?” Tim demands, grinning. 

“It would be far easier to make a list of what _isn’t,”_ she says. 

“I have no idea what you’re implying, Ms. James.” 

“Oh, just admit defeat and sit shotgun,” she mutters, decisively climbing into the driver’s seat. 

Tim relents and slides in next to her on the other side. “Just this once,” he concedes. 

“If you think I’m letting you drive me anywhere _ever_ again—” 

“Aw, you’ll teach me how to drive, though, right?” He bumps his shoulder against hers as she reverses out of the driveway, and she rolls her eyes but smiles. 

“You already know how to drive, Tim, you’re just _bad_ at it. I can’t fix that. Banking on the inherent romanticism of someone teaching you how to drive stick, are you?” 

“Wait, seriously? You can drive a stickshift?” 

“You _can’t?”_

“Nobody can, Sasha! They haven’t been relevant in, like, a decade!” 

As they bicker, he feels himself relax minutely. Things are still, ultimately, what they were before. She’s still _Sasha,_ still his best friend, still bright and teasing and funny and unwilling to give him any ground he hasn’t earned. It’s just that now he steals quick, coffee-flavored kisses from her at long red lights and she pushes him away, laughing and lecturing him about road safety. It’s a weird feeling, finally having what he’s wanted for so long. Not a feeling that’s familiar to him, but one that’s slowly beginning to sink in and feel _real._ He tries not to get all circumspect and sentimental about it, but—

The drive back from Ilfracombe is one of the best car rides Tim’s ever had in his life. 

Usually, he can’t stand long car trips if he’s not the one driving—staying in one position with nothing to do is antithetical to his whole deal, and staring out the window in the hopes of turning off his brain only works for so long—but this one is spent almost entirely talking to Sasha. Or listening to her talk. She keeps up a running commentary as she drives, cursing at the pickup that stays in her blind spot for a full minute before fully passing her and grumbling mutinously at the car in front of her that keeps slowing down without warning. It’s charming in the odd sort of way most things Sasha does are. 

There’s not much about each other they don’t know, he’s coming to realize. At least not much that gets brought up in casual conversation. 

They’ve been living in each other’s pockets for the last year or so anyway, but he’s still pleasantly surprised to learn he already knows Sasha’s opinions on _The X-Files_ (grew up watching the show, started out anti-Mulder/Scully on the grounds that the show would be ruined by a romance but finally caved somewhere around season five, spent the vast majority of her life loving it, currently pissed that it’s jumped the shark) and the royal family (“The monarchy,” she says, gesticulating wildly, “should be abolished. I don’t care about national pride. Do you know how much we spent on the royal family last year?” “No, actually!” “Humor me, Tim. Guess.”) and Valentine’s Day (fine as long as you don’t go overboard with it, but it’s never been her thing). All the little bits of a person you gather up through years of just being in their proximity and listening. 

With dating, there’s always been the getting-to-know-you stage. It’s a kind of an accepted constant. Tim thought he’d be left floundering without it, honestly, that slow uncovering of who someone is, what they like and what they don’t and what they’re apathetic about and what gets them rambling so passionately they nearly forget to pause for breath. 

But he’s already done that with Sasha, over years and at work and in her flat and drunk and sober and every other possible iteration, and this new thing between them is just—something else. An additional layer, not the defining feature. 

He’s not stupid enough to think he knows every aspect of her. He knows she doesn’t think that’s possible anyway, and he’s not sure he’d want it if he got it. It seems so lonely, knowing a person entirely. Knowing them as well as you know yourself.

This, though—this quiet, proud understanding as he watches her almost rear-end the car in front of them yet again and, without missing a beat, continue ranting about the worst horror movie tropes—this is all he'd ever wanted. 

Glancing over at him, she cuts herself off mid-ramble. “You’re overthinking again.”

“What? I’m—”

“No, you definitely are. You went all—” she gestures broadly in his direction, not looking away from the road. “Moony and weird.” 

“I don’t go _moony.”_

“How would you know?” she retorts. “You didn’t see your face.” 

“Well, I’m not overthinking. In fact, I’m not thinking at all,” Tim says primly.

“Hardly a first for you,” she mutters around a smile. 

“Hey, I’m an intellectual!” he protests. “I think things all the time.” 

“Example?” 

He leans back, crossing his arms. “Just right then I was thinking you should let me have the aux cord so I can _prove_ to you that ‘Wonderwall’ is a good song.” 

Sasha scoffs. “You and your callbacks. Tim, nothing you could do or say will ever—” 

“The callbacks are _charming._ And really? Not even if I serenaded you? C’mon, everyone loves a good serenade.” 

“Not me.”

“Ooo, is that a challenge?” 

“Oh God, _no,”_ she groans. 

“No, no, you threw down a _gauntlet,_ Sasha!”

“I absolutely, unequivocally did not do that.”

“The gauntlet’s been thrown. Now my _honor’s_ at stake!” Tim exclaims. “It’s very serious. I have to do this now.” He considers. “Unless you have some kind of serenade trauma, in which case—”

She snorts, shaking her head. “No, I don’t have _serenade trauma.”_

“You sure?” he checks, grinning. “I really can adapt if you need me to. I’m adaptable.” 

“Yes, I’m sure I don’t have serenade trauma. If I did, I’d have told you by now, probably.” 

_“Probably,”_ he echoes incredulously. 

Sasha rolls her eyes. “Well, I have to have some secrets. But no. No serenade trauma. _Yet,”_ she hurries to add, glaring at him. “And I’d like to keep it that way, thank you very much.” 

“You know, I’d like to think it wouldn’t be traumatic if I did it,” Tim grumbles. 

“No, I’m sure it would all be very romantic,” she says, every word dripping with sarcasm, but he knows by now to listen for the curl of the smile in her voice. “Candlelight and rose petals and your acoustic guitar—don’t think I’ve forgotten about that, by the way—”

“I would never,” he says. “And you’re right, it would be romantic. Glad you came around!” 

“Sure.” They drive in silence for about a minute. “I don’t actually think this car even has an outlet for an aux cord.” 

He shrugs. “Like I said, I _can_ just sing it myself—” 

“Out of the question,” she declares, turning up the volume of the radio pointedly. 

“One day,” he says, raising his voice over Bastille (“How am I gonna be an optimist about this?” Dan Smith asks them mournfully). “One day, Sasha James, I’ll let you read my dissertation on Oasis’ discography, and then you’ll see—” 

She laughs outright. “Oh, you’ll _let_ me read it, will you? How generous of you.” 

“Oh, shut up.” 

“No, really, babe! How could I ever repay you for your magnanimity?” 

“I mean, you could let me serenade you with ‘Wonderw—” 

She turns the dial further right. _“No.”_

So, yes. It’s a good car ride by most conceivable standards. He considers stalling it out longer, maybe getting her to pull off to some nameless town outside London to get lunch-dinner and take her on their first real date as a real couple—oh, he hates how his heart skips a beat at the thought, it’s insufferable—but they have to get the rental car back to Hertz by six, so they don’t have the time to waste. Even as it stands now, they’re hitting the city at rush hour, which is far from ideal. 

They don’t talk all the time. That’s nice, too. Tim fills the silence sometimes, almost by reflex at this point, but there’s less of the urgency that’d driven him before. It’s just as easy to look out the window or listen to the music that is, apparently, popular. Sometimes he looks at her. The slope of her nose, the way her fingers curl around the wheel. He tries not to look too enamored, doubts he’s succeeding, and doesn’t care as much as he thought he might.

Still, he can’t shake the feeling that something is coming to an end.

It’s hard to tell if it’s just his brain unwilling to let him have something _good_ for once or if it’s some prey instinct, a tuned-in tension that goes deeper and truer than he cares to think about. Either way, by the time they’re nearly back to London proper, he can feel himself growing restless again. 

It’s not—he doesn’t think it’s all going to come crashing down the second they hit the city limits like some kind of fucking location-based Cinderella story or something, carriage into pumpkin and dress into rags. But it’s an end all the same, that dreamland bubble of a new relationship finally coming into contact with the outside world. With something that might be sharp. 

Sasha’s uneasy too, tapping her nails against the steering wheel. Tim holds himself back from asking—he doesn’t even know. Anything, he guesses. He wouldn’t expect a real explanation anyway. Instead, he just puts a hand on her shoulder for a moment, squeezes lightly. His question and his own answer in one. 

She understands, maybe, because she gives him a little smile. “We’re good.” 

He can’t stop himself from grinning. “Cool.” He sits back again, looks out the window thoughtfully. “Bet Jon’s pissed.” 

“What, that we didn’t turn up by lunch?” She shrugs. “He’ll live. Anyways, I think we’ve earned a proper holiday at this point. We—we all have, really. What with the worms and all that.” 

“Yeah, that’s fair. You’d better follow through with the camping trip thing, by the way. Don’t think I’ve forgotten.” 

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” she deadpans. “Look, if you’re really so worried about whether Jon’s coming for blood, you can stop catastrophizing and just check your phone.” 

“Oh. Yeah,” Tim says, and he does so. 

There aren’t any calls from Jon. There are, however, four missed calls from Martin and four corresponding voicemails over the last two hours. 

“Shit,” he mumbles. 

“What’s wrong?” 

“Just—Martin called four times. Left voicemails too.” 

“Shit,” she echoes. “Should I pull over, or—?” 

“No, no, it’s fine,” he says, tapping Martin’s name and holding the phone to his ear. Sasha turns the radio down further and brings her focus back to the road, but her shoulders are tense again and she’s biting the inside of her cheek. Tim stifles a sigh. Things had been going so well. What a stupid, selfish thing to think when one of your friends is probably— 

Finally, Martin picks up. “Tim?” He sounds—Christ, he sounds exhausted, and there’s a wobble in his voice that—

“Martin!” he exclaims, surprised at the relief that courses through him. “Are you alright? What h—” 

“Did you listen to the voicemails?” Martin cuts in. 

“No, I—I hadn’t been checking my phone, reception was patchy—” Kind of a lie, but he’d had it on Do Not Disturb, so same thing really— “But when I saw I’d missed so many calls I thought—I thought you must be hurt or something, so I called right away.” 

“Ha. Well. Yeah,” he says weakly. “Um, so… Prentiss attacked.” 

“I’m sorry, _what?”_ Tim says, and something inside him goes cold and hard, stone-heavy dread sinking down to the pit of his stomach. Sasha makes a questioning face at him, and he grimaces back and mouths _Prentiss attacked._ Sasha mouths _I can't read lips._ Tim sighs. 

“Yeah,” Martin repeats. “That’s… I mean, that’s just the start of it, really. I, uh—I already told the police the whole story, and Jon, too. He was there with me the whole time, but he… wanted my statement as well. Just to, I don’t know. Double-check?” 

“Hey, Martin, I’m gonna put you on speakerphone, okay?” Tim interrupts. “Sasha’s in the car too, and she should probably know as well.” 

“Right, yeah, of course,” Martin says. Tim does so. “Hi, Sasha.”

“Hi, Martin,” Sasha says, awkwardly gentle. “Are you... okay?” 

He laughs scratchily. “Um. I’m alive?” Sasha stares at Tim, alarmed, and mouths _What the fuck?_

“We’ll take that,” he tells him. “What happened?” 

Martin sighs. “Well, like I said, Jane Prentiss attacked the Institute. Right after lunch, Jon was recording a statement, and as far as I can tell, he… broke a hole in the drywall? While trying to smash a spider. Which I would’ve lectured him about, but then the—the worms started pouring out of the hole. Hundreds of them, thousands probably.”

Tim opens his mouth to cut in, but Martin continues speaking as if in some sort of trance, as if—as if giving a statement. Just like that, the pleasant haze of the last two days vanishes. It doesn’t even have the decency to slowly dissipate.

“I—We tried to go for the saferoom, but there were just too many of them and we couldn’t even make it there; we just ended up stuck in his office with some fire extinguishers in a sort of—last stand, I guess. We locked the office door because by then Prentiss was in the Archives like—like she _knew_ somehow that we would be down there. Like she was coming for us specifically.

“Eventually, we cleared out enough worms to see into the hole in the wall. There—Tim, there was a network of _tunnels._ B-below the Institute, I mean. We figured it was only a matter of time before Prentiss broke down the door, so we made a break for it. It was—it was hard. At that point, both of us were wounded, and Jon had left his cane in the office by accident anyway in all the chaos, so he was leaning on me as we both tried to run away. 

“Eventually, though, we came to a place where we could stop for a little. A couple worms had got us by then, so we sat down and I dug them out with the corkscrew—” 

“The corkscrew?” Sasha interrupts. “What do you m—”

“Yeah,” he says flatly. “The corkscrew. Look, I—I’d had time to think about this, alright? I wasn’t like the two of you, _I_ never got to leave the Archives, all I could do was plan for when—well, for when _this_ happened! Corkscrews made more sense than knives anyway, so I kept one with me. 

_"Anyways,_ I dug the worms out of us and then we started looking for—a way out, I suppose. It’s a—it’s a maze down there. It must stretch on for miles and miles, and none of the passageways made sense, and then—” He breaks off and pulls in a deep, shuddering breath. “Then we found the body.” 

Tim stares down at the phone in his hand. _“What?”_

“Gertrude’s body,” Martin clarifies quietly. “We found it in a room empty except for the chair she was sitting in and boxes and boxes of cassette tapes. She’d been shot. Three times to the chest.” 

“Oh my God,” Sasha says softly. 

“I think I probably would’ve—would’ve lost it right then if Jon hadn’t been there. He might’ve too. But we just—looked at each other. Like, silently agreeing that we couldn’t—we would just have to deal with that later. And we left as quickly as we could.” He sighs again, still shaky. “Then we found the trapdoor. It led—” Martin laughs bitterly. “It led right back to the _fucking_ office. Prentiss was in there. We got—well, it was just lucky that the fire suppression system went off when it did. The worms died when they were still half in us. Got to enjoy _that_ visual before passing right out. 

“From there it was what you’d expect, probably. ECDC, ambulances, quarantine, bandaging, police. Jon got a statement from me and then Elias, apparently he was the one who set off the fire suppression system manually. A bunch of other people got hurt by the worms, they didn’t get out in time, but nobody died, so that’s good at least. It’s—it was—” A wet noise that verges on a sob. “Fuck. Sorry.” 

Over the phone, Tim can hear him breathing unevenly but slowly, trying to calm himself down, and his heart aches for him. “I’m sorry, Martin,” he says. “We should’ve been there.” 

“God. _No,”_ Martin says, still choked but surprisingly fierce. “No, I’m glad you weren’t. Nobody should’ve had to go through that.” 

For a moment, there’s no sound except for the hum of the engine and the sound of cars passing. 

“...How was the wedding?” Martin asks, and Tim laughs in spite of himself. 

“If nothing else, it sounds like we had a marginally better time than you did,” Sasha remarks, and, blessedly, Martin chuckles. 

Tim exchanges a glance with her. “We’ll tell you about it next time we go out to Ernie’s, okay?” 

“Sounds like there’s a story there.” 

“Oh, there is,” she grins. “We’re just waiting til you’re not loopy on painkillers.” _And because it seems rude to brag about our new relationship three hours after you got infested by parasitic worms and got involved in a murder investigation,_ Tim adds silently. 

“Well, thanks,” Martin says, maybe even smiling. 

“Listen, Martin, do you need anything? We can bring you food, or—I mean, they didn’t even want to keep you at the hospital overnight?” he asks.

“You know, what with the twenty or so inch-deep puncture wounds, you’d think so, but—nope. Just gave me a bunch of special gauze and instructions for when I need to change my bandages, told me to buy some antiseptic so I could clean the wounds, and sent me on my merry way. Apparently they wanted to keep Jon overnight because he had more worrying holes on his face and throat—for some reason, it seems like the worms leapt for his eyes rather than the, the fleshier bits like they did for me?—but he refused, of course. You know how he is.” 

“Do I ever,” Tim mutters. “Seriously, though, do you want us to get you dinner? I know you like that Italian place by my flat.” 

“Oh, Tim, you don’t have to—” 

“But you want us to.” 

“Sasha, make him stop,” Martin pleads. “It’s expensive and I don’t want—at _least_ let me pay you two back—” 

“Sorry, Martin, I’m Tim’s side here for once,” Sasha informs him, grinning. “You got worm’d and found a dead body today, you can let us treat you to some overpriced fettuccine alfredo.” 

“Yeah, Sash and I will go splitskies on it. We’ll get some for Jon, too, don’t worry.”

“...Okay,” Martin concedes. “Alright. Just—check in on him for me, will you? I’ve been texting with him, trying to make sure he’s alright, but he’s even more of a brick wall over the phone.” 

“We will,” Tim says gently. “Try to get some rest, Martin.” 

“It’s not even dark out yet.”

 _“Goodnight,”_ he says firmly. 

“Rest up,” Sasha commands. 

Martin smiles audibly, though his voice is quiet. “Bye, guys.” And he hangs up. 

“Huh,” Sasha says. 

“...Huh.” 

She musters a smile, looks over at him nervously. “Some luck, right?” 

He huffs out a laugh. “Yeah, no kidding. I can’t imagine if we… you know, I almost cancelled my RSVP back in May? Couldn't face going alone, so I was just gonna apologize to Lee and say I had work stuff.” 

“Wow. We… really dodged a bullet, then.” 

“Guess so.” 

They pass some minutes in silence. Everything had changed so quickly. It doesn’t feel like there’s anything else they left to say to each other. When it comes down to it, Jon and Martin were _there,_ trapped and afraid and wounded and running for their lives, and they had been _here,_ bantering about fucking _Star Trek_ and singing along to Smash Mouth. It’s just a fact and now they have to live with it. It’s stupid to feel guilty, he knows it is, but he can’t help it; maybe if they’d been there, they could have… He doesn’t even know.

“Do you think we should—” 

“I think—” 

Tim laughs. “Go ahead.” 

“No, you can—” 

“Just say whatever you were going to say or we’ll go in circles forever,” he says. 

“Is that a threat?” 

“Yes. Go.” 

She rolls her eyes. “Fine. I think you should call ahead to Jon and figure out what he wants and then make an order for pickup. I’m tired of pensively staring out the window; I want to _do_ something.” 

He’s picking up his phone and searching for Jon’s contact before she’s even done with the second sentence. “Okay, cool.”

“What were you going to say?” she asks after a few seconds. 

“Literally the exact same thing.” Tim grins over at her. “Very cute of us, in my opinion.” 

“No more sappy shite,” she mutters as if she isn’t ducking her head to hide a smile. “I’m putting an official embargo on it. Our friends got attacked by a worm woman today, it’s no time for—” 

“Worman,” he comments, and she wrinkles her nose at him, not even bothering to dignify him with a response. Oh, he’s allowed to think that’s adorable now without feeling guilty about it, isn’t that something? 

“And on the contrary, I think this is the best time for it,” he retorts. “Some joy in this bleak goddamn horrorshow.” 

“You may have a point, but dial it back before we talk to Jon,” she advises. “Something tells me he’ll be less charmed.”

“Mm. Fair enough.” He taps the _Call_ button. The first attempt goes to voicemail, because of course it does. Undeterred, he tries again, and Jon finally picks up after two rings.

“Tim?” His voice is raspy, like he’s been talking too much or screaming himself hoarse or both, and Tim winces in sympathy. 

“Yeah, it’s me, I’m—I’m here. Sasha too. Listen, Jon, we’re thinking about coming by your flat to drop off some food and check in on you. We were thinking Italian. You like ravioli, right?” 

“Yes, I d—where _were_ you?” There’s the anger in his tone that Tim had been bracing himself for, but mostly he sounds plaintive. Lost. The frustration is a too-thin veneer, nothing more. 

“We got… held up,” Tim says, the guilt crashing back in full force.

“We’re really sorry, Jon,” Sasha tells him softly. 

Jon sighs; a rough, harsh noise. “Don’t, it’s fine, it’s—fine. Frankly, I don’t have much of an appetite, but—” 

“You can’t get rid of us that easily, Jon,” he says, talking over him. “We’re coming by anyway whether you’re hungry or not, so you might as well be honest and get some food out of it.” 

“I doubt you took lunch anyway before P—before, well, you know,” she adds. 

“That’s… fair,” Jon admits. He doesn’t sound any more relaxed, but Tim knows by now to appreciate any ground he’s willing to give.

“We know you too well,” he grins at the phone. 

“Ravioli’s good,” Jon orders briskly. “With marinara sauce. I don’t trust anything more complicated.” 

“You got it, boss,” Tim says. “Need anything else?” 

“No, that’s all. I don’t need you to _mother_ me.” After a beat, he reluctantly says, “Thank you for calling. Both of you.” 

“Of course,” Sasha says. “We’re your friends, Jon.” 

“Exactly,” Tim agrees. “It’s not—it isn’t a chore to help you out.”

“Right,” Jon mumbles, as if to himself. “Right.” There’s another long pause. “Remind me why the two of you were away again?” 

He frowns down at the cell phone. “Jon, we were at my cousin’s wedding. I told you about it back in—June, I think? You knew we’d be gone.” 

“You said you two would be back by lunch today.” 

“I said we _probably_ would,” he corrects. “Hard to tell, with the—traffic.” 

“Right,” Jon says again. With clearly forced casualness, he adds, “Hell of a coincidence, isn’t it?” 

This time, Tim looks to Sasha, who’s already looking back at him with furrowed brows. “What?” 

“To be gone on this _exact_ day.” 

Sasha laughs anxiously. “We were just talking about that, actually. It’s funny how it worked out.” 

“Yeah, we—” Tim starts, then finds he doesn’t have anything to add. He clears his throat and repeats, “Yeah.” 

“Let me know when you’re on your way here, will you?” Jon says, voice somewhere between brusque and suddenly so, so weary, and hangs up. 

Tim stares down at the screen of his phone, lost. “Now what?” 

Sasha sighs. “Now we call Bella Italia and order, I guess.”

“I guess so,” he murmurs, checking his messages. Martin’s texted to say he wants the fettuccine alfredo. “What’s your order?”

“Caesar salad’s fine; I’m not too hungry,” she says idly, focus back on the road again. It’s getting increasingly crowded. “You know, it’s going to be a bitch to get this food delivered. We have to take the car back by six, and then we have to get our suitcases back to our respective flats, and then it’s to Bella Italia to get our orders, and then we have to go to—fuck, where’s Martin even _staying?_ I assume his storage room is off-limits now what with the worms, but at least it won’t be all the way to Stockwell—anyways, to wherever Martin is, and then it’s Jon in Pimlico, and then back to my place again. The train fares alone are going to be hell; don’t even get me started on the _planning—”_

“Stop, stop, my head’s hurting,” Tim complains. “We could just have theirs delivered.” 

“What? No,” she says dismissively. “Don’t be ridiculous, of course we’re going to bring the food to them. They almost died, for God’s sake. It’s literally the least we could do. I’m just—saying, is all.” 

“Complaining for the sake of complaining?” 

“Well, sometimes you have to.”

“Can’t argue with that,” he grins, and picks up the phone once again. 

* * *

The process is exactly as hellish as Sasha had predicted. He watches her bite back an _I told you so_ for an hour and a half with increasing amusement as they wrangle with returning the car, finding the Best Western in Kensington that Martin’s apparently paying for out of pocket even after everything (“Jesus _Christ,”_ Sasha hisses, and Tim’s in agreement, but they know better than to think that he’d accept their help if they offered), figuring out the most economical route for their jaunt around West London. Eventually, they admit defeat and decide to just figure things out as they go. 

Once the planning process is over, though, it’s surprisingly… not terrible. The heat of the day’s worn off a bit, so the crowded station isn’t as unpleasant as it could be, and even the hordes of commuters aren’t at their worst, by some miracle. 

They spend most of the trip to the restaurant in exhausted silence, which isn’t bad either. It would be hard to find the words anyway, so as the train speeds up, Tim just holds tighter to the pole and takes her hand. She doesn’t protest—some small part of him expected her to, somehow—instead leaning their shoulders together and sighing softly, head lowered. 

He watches the people filing in and out of the carriage, the doors opening and closing, the train stopping and starting. Time blurs together the way it always seems to when he doesn’t have anything to latch onto; hopefully Sasha’s keeping track of the stops. He’s trying not to worry about Jon and Martin. Trying being the operative word there. In the end, there’s nothing he can do about it now. He’s here now. 

He had almost thought he was done with this part of his life. The aimless anger and the too-late protectiveness.

He takes a breath in. Searches for calm. Sasha squeezes his hand and leans her temple against his, only for a moment. She’s not much for PDA when it’s not for the benefit of an act, he knows, and just that small gesture is enough to make his chest feel lighter, even if it’s only temporary. It’s enough. It’s more than he had ever dared to hope for.

Tim’s not sure what he’d expected love to be like as a kid. Knights in shining armor, maybe. Fire or birds or gold or sunlight. A million metaphors that capture the feeling but never the idea itself, not quite. 

But as they get off the train and climb the stairs out of the station and emerge, blinking, into the evening light, Sasha doesn’t let go of his hand. She runs her thumb over his knuckles and looks over at him and smiles. 

“It’ll be alright,” she says. “We’ll—we’ll figure it out, you know?” 

And maybe that’s it.

He raises his eyebrows at her. “Who are you trying to convince, yourself or me?” The question comes out a bit too solemn, but she takes it in stride. 

“I don’t need to convince anybody. You’ll see,” she tells him. Like it’s indisputable fact. Maybe it is. 

“I’ll hold you to that,” he informs her, half-smiling. 

“Good. Anyways, your place or mine tonight?” she asks, swinging their hands together a little as they walk, and his smile comes out in full force. 

“Yours. You said it yourself, you’ve got the better flat.” 

“It’s always so nice when you see reason,” Sasha grins.

“I do my best, but I make no promises,” he warns. 

“As long as you’re trying,” she concedes. “Do you think they’ve got the order ready by now?” 

“It’s been a decade; they’d _better_ have it ready by now.” 

“You have never worked in the food service industry and it’s painfully obvious, Tim. Show some respect.” 

“I might have!” 

“But you haven’t.” 

“...I have not. That’s beside the point.”

“It’s not! It _is_ the point!”

They’re probably going to need to have another capital-c Conversation. Apply clearer definitions to their relationship, figure out what’s okay and what isn’t, decide what they want in the long term. 

They’ve spent enough time dancing around this, watching things get lost in translation and not doing anything to fix it. But he’s happy with where they are right now. It feels secure. Stable and easy and _good_ the way little else does, here in the heart of the eldritch mess his world seems dead set on becoming. 

Later, Tim knows they’ll have to get to work. Confront what they’ve missed, do the necessary damage control. They’ll have to count their casualties. They’ll have to talk. To each other, to Jon, to Martin. They’ll have to put the Archives back into order, and they’ll have to figure out where to go from here. 

But for now, Tim thinks as he holds the restaurant’s door open for Sasha and follows her inside, all they have to do is be content. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i hope you all are happy with how i chose to end this! it would have felt disingenuous somehow not to address the tragic mess this show would always become, but i like to think things are better this way. i like to think they still get to be happy somewhere in the darkness.
> 
> you can find me on tumblr [@boneroutes](https://boneroutes.tumblr.com) if you'd like to and, as ever, comments and kudos make my day! thank you so much for reading this. everybody's support and love for this fic has been really breathtaking, and it's been a genuinely wonderful experience writing this for you all. <3


End file.
